TRAVIS IN GUATE!

2010-09-14T05:33:00.000-07:00

The main theme in Guatemala the last month or 2 has definitely been: RAIN. I can definitely say I've never seen as much rain in my life as I have since the beginning of August. Last week I went to help some other volunteers give an HIV-AIDS workshop to middle school students in a village a few hours from my site. It had rained a lot the whole week before, and after the workshop we got word from peace corps that we should avoid non-essential travel due to the danger of landslides caused by the rain. This was later moved to a formal stand fast order, meaning we weren't aloud to travel anywhere. I ended up getting stuck with no way to get home for over a week. It was a bit annoying, and also scary--lots of people across the country were killed or hurt in landslides and other accidents. The worst case was a landslide which buried a bus and several cars on the Interamerican highway in Nahuala, only to be followed by a second landslide in the same place which buried dozens of rescue workers trying to save people buried by the first landslide. It was really awful, especially since that was the road I needed to take to get home. Despite the circumstances, I had a nice time hanging out in Xela and the surrounding area and visiting several friends that I hadn't seen in a while. I got to eat lots of amazing food (was introduced to an incredible Indian restaurant in Xela!), play scrabble, and just get a needed break from things here. Despite not having clean clothes after the first few days and getting worried that Tango (my turtle) was home by himself, a trip to the laundromat in Xela and a call to some friends in site to go rescue Tango made me feel like a new man. Putting on a shirt which was still warm from coming out of the dryer was a luxury I hadn't experienced in ages!

2010-08-12T17:00:00.000-07:00

I got an unexpected but very pleasant surprise when my dad called me last saturday night. “I have someone here that wants to talk to you,” he told me from his house in Jersey City, New Jersey. He handed the phone over, and to my amazement I was greeted by Katarina, the mother of one of the teachers I work with here in the Guatemalan highlands. I was so shocked at first by the connection between these two previously seperate parts of my life, it took me a few moments to understand what was going on and piece together how it had happened.

About a month ago I was talking with Lucia, one of the elementary school teachers I work with, and her mother Katarina. Lucia mentioned that her father was living in the U.S., and her mother Katarina had obtained a tourist visa and was going to visit her husband in a few weeks. While they weren't exactly sure what city in New Jersey he lived in, Katarina recognized the name Jersey City when I told her that's where my dad lived. I told Katarina that my dad would be happy to meet her and her husband while she was visiting the states, and wrote down his phone number and address. I honestly didn't expect them to call. I thought they may feel uncomfortable calling a complete stranger in a foreign country, and more or less forgot about it.

I was mistaken. When they coordinated the visit over the phone (fortunately Lucia's father, Juan, speaks English after 4 years living in the U.S.), my dad specifically didn't tell me beforehand in order to make it a surprise, which it certainly was. The next day my dad told me more about the visit. When they arrived at his door, he knew they were the right people because Katarina was dressed in her traditional Guatemalan traje, which he recognized from when he came to visit me earlier this year. They ate BLTs and drank soda. They chatted about work, family, their lives in Guatemala and the United States, with Juan serving as a translator between Katarina and my dad. They asked to see pictures of me, and took pictures with my dad and of the house. While they had taken a bus the 10 miles or so to get there, my dad drove them home afterwords.

I hope to meet Juan next year when I'm back in the U.S. next year and ask him to show me the Guatemalan restaurants in the area. I told my dad about the 3 different parts of the peace corps mission, and how his hosting people from my site for dinner at his house had so perfectly fulfilled the goals of cultural exchange and understanding. While this experience doesn't deal directly with my work here, it really meant a lot to me that after living in Guatemala for over a year and a half I was able to share a small part of my life and my family back home with people from here in my site.

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Otherwise, my work is going well. I've mostly still been observing classes. As always there are some days that are very encouraging and others that are very discouraging, and the struggle is always to make the steps forward outnumber the steps back. The routine definitely gets tedious and frustrating at times, but I suppose it's a very good thing that my role seems to be receding as the teachers continue to take over the different elements of the program on their own. They all know by now what's expected of them—whether they do it or not is a different story—but I suppose I've done my part. My official counterpart, the school superintendent, has also taken more initiative to be involved recently, which is encouraging. Yesterday when I went to see him in his office I even saw he had a “healthy schools” note hanging on the wall.

One event I've planned with my schools for this month which I'm excited about is transversal visits between my 3 schools. The idea is for all the 14 teachers to visit each others' schools over the course of the month. We hope to use the visits to share ideas and suggestions, and for me to organize some training activities. Unfortunately the first visit last week had to be postponed when the school director was in a motorcycle accident. He's ok and is at home recovering, and we plan to reschedule the visit for early september.

The United Nations has recently begun working in my area in conjunction with the TIGO foundation (TIGO is Guatemala's largest phone and telecomunications company). Part of their work is to improve local schools, and several schools in the area have received some major infrastructure improvements. 2 of my schools are among the schools to receive projects.

In Oxlajuj they just finished a project to build a new kitchen, bathrooms and sinks, and the school is currently getting a new paint job. In Ichomchaj they just started construction last week on 3 new classrooms, new bathrooms, 6 sinks, and a kitchen expansion with at least one improved cookstove.

The renovations will really make a difference, especially in Ichomchaj. They've been short 2 classrooms since last year, so 2 classes have been working in makeshift open air classrooms made of corrugated metal. The metal turns the classrooms into an oven during hot days, and on rainy days they get filled with water and mud. The stove will allow the school snack to be cooked in a healthier, more environmentally friendly way, as opposed to over an open fire as it currently is, which not only uses more wood but also creates lots of smoke which often flows into the adjacent preschool classroom. Upper respiratory infections caused by smoke inhalation are one of the two main causes of infant mortality in Guatemala, and the improved cook stove will have a chimney to prevent these problems, as well as serving as an example for the community. The new bathrooms are also very important, since I often see kids going off in the woods when the existing bathrooms are either occupied or disgustingly dirty from being broken and backed up. Possibly most important, however, are the new sinks attached to the new bathrooms. Along with upper respiratory infections, complications from diarrea are the other principal cause of infant mortality in Guatemala, and the World Health Organization estimates that the risk of diarrea can be reduced by up to 80% by adecuate hand washing. Hand washing literally saves lives, and now kids will be able to do so more easily after going to the bathroom and before eating snack.

Despite the undeniable benefits the project will bring to the schools and surrounding communities, my only reservation regards the lack of community involvement in the project. I've been talking about the need for these projects at these schools for almost a year and a half now, and trying to get the parents, school committees and local municipal government to support them, with limited progress. I've talked lots of times about the importance of sustainability and community involvement, as the peace corps philosophy stresses, and that any project must be 'tripartito'--I don't know the english equivalent, but it basically means that the project has to done in '3 parts', supported by both the local municipal government (financially) as well as the community itself (providing free labor to the masons) in order for the peace corps to support the project via the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Now another organization has come in to do these projects, and I can't help but feel the wind taken out of my sails a bit. On the other hand, however, despite the critical importance of community involvement in the education of their children, shouldn't schools with decent infrastructure—bathrooms, sinks, a kitchen, and enough classrooms—be a GIVEN, a minimum starting point, things they shouldn't have to fight for? Furthermore, I've always complained about how NGOs and other international organizations are always centered around large touristy cities like Antigua and Xela while neglecting more remote communities like the ones I live in, so it's nice to see the U.N. step in take initiative as part of the millenium goals.

Of course there's also a personal aspect of it as well. While many of my friends have played important roles in school and other infrastructure projects in their communities, I really can't take much credit for these projects other than helping to identify the needs in the schools (which I suppose is important). Every peace corps volunteer wants to feel heroic, that they played an essential role in bringing something critically important to their community. I suppose I'll have to be content with the less visible contributions I've made in the schools and community. And of course in the end I also have to keep in mind the MOST important thing: the well-being and quality of life of the kids I work with and their families. That well-being is the real reason I'm here, and is undeniably benefited by these projects.

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With only 7 and a half months left of my peace corps service, I've been thinking with increasing freqency about the future. I remember when I first started thinking about joining the peace corps, the thought of what I would do AFTER the peace corps barely crossed my mind. Now, 7 years later by my calculations, the story is somewhat different and the post-peace corps reality is quickly approaching. I remember reading somewhere during training that readjustment to life back in the states is often even harder than adjusting to living in your peace corps community was in the first place. I find this hard to believe (living here the last year and a half has been plenty hard enough), but am nonetheless determined to making the transition as painless as possible.
The more I've thought about it, the more convinced I am that graduate school is my next step. When I graduated from Hopkins I was sick of school and academics, and just wanted to get as far away from it as I could. Now, over 5 years later, things have changed quite a bit. Living in a community with a 70% illiteracy rate and where education is often not appreciated, I find myself very excited by the prospect of being back in an academically stimulating and challenging environment. For the past several months I've been looking at different masters programs in the international development/public policy field. I've made the goal to do at least one graduate school related task every day, and this has not only helped me get a good start on getting my applications together, but has also given me a new sense of purpose and motivation when my work has been frustrating or I've felt down. I've been taking an online statistics course through Carnegie Mellon University, which will hopefully strengthen my application and has also been very interesting and even fun. I'm still deciding which schools to apply to, but have decided to shoot for some very selective programs. I've been pleased to learn about some amazing financial aid possibilities, as well as some special fellowships specifically for returned peace corps volunteers. If all goes according to plan I should be starting in August of 2011, just over a year from now!

2010-06-03T07:31:00.000-07:00

I've been home all week and have been finding out, bit by bit through a combination of facebook posts from friends and word of mouth here, that the extent of the damage from the storm is a lot greater than I initially realized. The roads across the country seem to be a mess, and due to a broken pipe we haven't had running water all week and may not have it back up for a month. It's a lot worse in other parts of the country, however. I've seen reports and pictures from friends of roads, schools, and homes being completely washed away by floods of mud and water, sadly in many cases with people still trapped inside. With all the unforeseeable and unpreventable catastrophes Guatemala faces--so far in just the first 5 months of this year we've seen storms, volcanos, and earthquakes--it makes me realize the challenges Guatemalans face in both their daily lives as well as their long term development.

2010-06-03T06:34:00.000-07:00

Surprisingly, the rain seems to have stopped sometime last night. I'm currently stuck in my room, on 'Standfast'--meaning I can't leave my site-- after peace corps activated the emergency action plan yesterday in response to tropical storm Agatha hitting the Pacific coast. It rained constantly yesterday and the day before, and I was starting to get worried when my walls started getting damp. There have been reports of people killed by landslides, and there is a risk of more flooding and landslides until at least tomorrow. By pure coincidence, Agatha, the first tropical storm of this hurricane season, hit only a few days after a major volcanic eruption last week of the Pacaya Volcano. At least 3 people were killed by falling debris, the international airport has been closed due to ash in the sky, and Guatemala city has been covered with several inches of a sand/ash mixture. It's apparently quite difficult to clean up, especially when mixed with all the rain we've received. Being cooped in my room, I've felt a mixture of boredom and excitement with everything, but I guess it's a good, past-due opportunity to update my blog.

The past few days leave little doubt that the Guatemalan rainy season has begun in earnest. The great thing about the rainy season is that, after the last 5 months or so of everything being brown, dry and dusty, all the fields and hillsides are green again, and things are starting to look more alive. The corn (milpa in Spanish, ixim in K'iche) is starting to come up all around. The small green parrots I first noticed last year, but hadn't seen in many months, are back in town, and I've greatly enjoyed watching and listening to them while biking to work. Another random experience happened to me the other day when, while on my way home from school, a guy tried to sell me a LIVE SKUNK he had trapped inside of a burlap sack. Judging from the smell coming from the bag, I think the skunk was quite unhappy with its situation, and I politely declined the purchase.

A few days ago my friend Anibel invited me to go see his family plot. While only a short distance out of town, I saw all sorts of things I'd never seen before. We descended a steep path into a small canyon, where he showed me a natural spring where his aunt and uncle walked 45 minutes round trip, down and back up the steep stairs, to get water. He also showed me several plants I didn't know existed in the area. While I'd seen local crops of corn, beans, and chiles as well as orange, lime, and avocado trees, I didn't know there were also coffee, papaya, bananas, guiscil (a type of squash) also grown within a 10 minute walk from my front door. Everything was green and beautiful, and the whole time Anibel gave me lots of new insights and perspectives about the life of local people here—agricultural and economic activities, and also things him and his friends do such as hunting squirrels, birds, and armadillos at night. It made me realize that despite all of my education and experience in Guatemala, there's still such an enormous cultural and knowledge gap that I don't think I'd ever fill even if I lived here my whole life.

Earlier this week I co-facilitated an HIV-AIDS workshop at the middle school here in town with 2 of the teachers. It was a lot of fun to get to work with the older kids. I live right next door to the school, and lots of the students come talk to me when I sit out in my doorway and read in the afternoons, and I've been wanting to work with them formally for a long time now. I think the workshop went pretty well for my first one. Despite the normal challenges of working with teenagers, in addition to lots of loud rain pelting the roof, they seemed to listen to the information pretty well. We'll do the workshop again with the other class on monday.

A few weeks ago I had a very adventurous vacation with my friend Aaron, traveling through remote jungles and on to the Caribbean Coast, stopping in between to run the Coban half marathon for my second year.

We met up in Coban, one of Guatemala's larger cities up in the tropical department of Alta Verapaz 5 hours north of Guatemala City. From there we traveled in a long, sweaty, crammed chicken bus to Laguna Lachua, a perfectly round, pristine lake in the middle of the jungle near the border with Mexico. There is no road to the lake, so after getting dropped off at the park entrance we had to hike 45 minutes through the jungle to get to the laguna, where we slept in a small park lodge in beds under mosquito nets. It was well worth the hike as soon as we went swimming in the warm, crystal clear turquoise water.

Aaron brought his mask and snorkel, and there were all sorts of tropical fish in the water—more than I'd ever seen in fresh water. There were also crocodiles, so we were advised to stay in the swimming area and not go in the water at night. We went out to the dock our first evening and shined our flashlights to see a baby crocodile, not more than a foot long, swimming in the shallow water. We spent 2 nights at Lachua, and during our second day we met up with 2 peace corps volunteers in the area to go hiking in another nearby park, where we saw a bunch of howler monkeys, iguanas, and lots of birds. We walked to several other lagunas, including one small pond that was bright red for mysterious reasons.

We were told these lagunas were also inhabited by crocodile populations, and we did see one dark green back swimming slowly through murky water at one point. We also passed by an old abandoned oil drilling operation, including a large metal pump, and climbed a hill and saw a panorama of the largely deforested surrounding landscape.

Heading back to Laguna Luchua, the chicken bus didn't have any room inside, so we climbed up onto the roof—it seemed like a good idea at the time, and was a lot of fun. Unfortunately I wasn't paying attention, and during the bumpy ride both my cell phone flew out of my pocket AND my beloved digital camera of almost 5 years somehow got it's screen smashed. RIP. And to top it off, my supposedly waterproof watch got condensation inside. On to happier things.

From Lachua we headed back to Coban for the half marathon the following day. There were about 10 or so other peace corps volunteers running, and we met up with some of my friends for a pasta dinner for runners the night before.

In hindsight, it may not have been the best idea to do so much hiking in the 2 days before a long running event, but I felt pretty good the morning of the race. I'd been training hard since january and felt pretty confident, so I started off with a pretty quick pace. Again in hindsight, this may or may not have been the best strategy, because by the last third of the race I was REALLY hurting. The climate in Coban is very different from up in the highlands where I live and train, and it was HOT and only got hotter as the sun got higher in the sky. I think the different environment from what I was used to really affected me, because I was greatly struggling, both mentally and physically by the end. Every step was a struggle, and I had to continuously tell myself to keep going, to resist the urge to stop and rest, because I knew once I stopped running I would not be able to start again. Finally, after what seemed like the longest last half hour of my life at the end, I crossed the finish line in 1 hour, 50 minutes-- 6 minutes faster than my time from last year. I staggered out with the other finishing runners, not even able to walk in a straight line, picked up my metal and a bottle of cold water, and almost collapsed to rest with my friends.

Wanting to take advantage of the limited vacation days we had, Aaron headed out on another long, sweaty chicken bus ride that same afternoon headed east. We had a great time meeting and joking around with our fellow passengers, who randomly enough included a group of clowns—still in complete makeup— who'd been performing in Coban.

The scenery along the way was some of the most spectacular I'd seen in Guatemala. That geology of that part of the country, extending far north into the Yucatan penninsula, is largely comprised of calcium limestone deposits, and as we traveled the long dirt roads through spectacular jungle scenery, huge freestanding limestone pinnacles jutted abruptly from the ground, often shrouded in mist at the top and beautifully lit in the late afternoon light.

The following day Aaron and I visited a park called Las Conchas (the shells), a river with a series of spectacular rapids and waterfalls culminating in a sheer drop off of water, probably 30 feet high and 100-200 feet wide. We spent the morning exploring the area, swimming, and taking pictures of each other jumping off the big waterfall. It felt like the tropical version of our favorite winter past time of taking pictures of each other skiing off cliffs into the waist-deep snow in Colorado.

The next morning we caught a ride in the back of a truck and continued east—through even more incredible jungle scenery— to Rio Dulce, the freshwater river connecting Guatemala's largest lake, Izabal, to the Caribbean. We took a boat ride down the river, where the marinas we passed reminded me of my Gramma Judy. When I told her I was going to Guatemala a year and a half ago, the first thing she told me was about how she used to ride out hurricane season with her boat on the very same river I was now on myself. I thought about her as we went along the water past more incredible jungle and limestone cliffs.

We spent 2 nights on a small tributary of the river in a very cool hostel in the middle of the jungle. We had a great time relaxing in the hammocks, jumping off the rope swing into the river, meeting other travelers, and kayaking up the river to check out some natural hot springs and caves.

Our final destination was Livingston, at the end of the river on the coast of the Caribbean. Livingston is known for being the center of Guatemala's Garifuna culture and language. Comprised of descendants of escaped slaves from St. Vincent hundreds of years ago, the garifunas are spread across the Caribbean coast of Honduras, Guatemala, and Belize. Walking the streets felt a little strange to me after having lived the last 16 months in the highlands. While the Caribbean influence was very strong, I could also tell we were still in Guatemala. I'd been wanting to visit this unique corner of Guatemala for a long time, and was very happy to finally get the chance. That afternoon we had a good time walking along the beach a few km out of town to swim in some natural pools and waterfalls called “siete altares”. We stayed in a quiet hotel with bungalows on the water, where we had a nice dinner and chatted with the Guatemalan/Belgian owners.

The next day we took a boat ride on the Caribbean to Puerto Barrios, and from there another long bus ride back to Guatemala City (fortunately this time more comfortable with AC), then on to Antigua, where we went out dancing for a bit that night. Aaron headed back to the states early the following morning, after a great vacation with great times and great friends!

The only other experience I wanted to write about was the opportunity I had to translate last month for a group of American surgeons in Guatemala on a medical mission. They were doing operations to repair things like cleft palates, hernias, and tumor removals. It was a really amazing experience! I was mainly helping organize and prepare things with people before the surgery, but I also had the opportunity to translate a few times during the actual procedure when it was only local anesthesia. A lot of “does this hurt? Tell us if it hurts?” A lot of the people were from remote indigenous areas and didn't even speak Spanish, so we actually needed 2 translators to communicate with the patient. It made things tougher and I'm sure a lot of words were lost, but in the end we were able to get the essentials across-- “Ouch” is pretty universal!

The most amazing thing about the experience, however, was what I realized about one of the surgeons the first day. When I first met the group, I immediately thought that one of the surgeons in charge of the group looked strangely familiar. “Are you a plastic surgeon?”, I asked. “Yes”, he responded. “From Baltimore?” I continued. Again, he answered in the affirmative. It turns out he was the same surgeon who had removed my melanoma 5 years ago to the month! I truly couldn't believe the coincidence, I was literally shaking at first from the shock. I had a great time catching up with my former surgeon, and the experience of re-uniting with him really brought my peace corps experience full circle for me, reminding me of how much I had gone through to be here. The last time I had seen him, 5 years ago, I had been going through what was undoubtedly the hardest time in my life. All I'd wanted to do after graduating college was to go in to the Peace Corps, and was so frustrated that my cancer made me medically ineligible for 3 years. Now, 5 years later I had finally achieved my dream. Despite the frustrations, boredom, loneliness, and many other challenges I face here, that reminder from the past gave me great inspiration to keep going. As I write these words, I now have less than 10 months to go until finishing my service. I hope I can make them good ones.

2010-04-05T14:57:00.001-07:00

Last week was Semana Santa, Holy Week, a very important event throughout all of Latin America and particularly here in Guatemala since it is a very Catholic country, probably the most religious country I've ever been in. I was invited to participate in the activities as a Roman soldier in the “cuadro viviente”, the dramatization of Jesus's last days. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it turned out to be a really wonderful experience, a lot of fun, exhausting, and most importantly a huge boost in my community integration.

We've been rehearsing the last several Sundays, but since the rehearsals were mostly in K'iche, and kind of disorganized to begin with, I wasn't exactly sure what was going on most of the time. Nonetheless I was able to wing it pretty well just by following what the others were doing. We started off last Sunday, Palm Sunday (domingo de ramas) with a procession through town to the church, with everyone carrying branches. On thursday morning my host family invited me for traditional breakfast of “sheka”, a flat, pancake shaped bread served with sweet molasses, a traditional food eaten during semana santa in this area. That afternoon the dramatization began in earnest. All of the other soldiers and I went around town from house to house asking for “Pan para Judas”, “Bread for Judas”, kind of trick-or-treat style, and people gave us more shekas. Afterwords we re-enacted the last supper in the town square in front of the church. I could sort of follow what was going on, but pretty much just did what the other soldiers did.

After Jesus was betrayed by Judas (who was egged on by "demons") and captured, he was put into “jail”, a small wooden cage in front of the church parish building, where he held a basket asking for donations from the people to cover the week's expenses. Each soldier had to take turns guarding him for an hour throughout the night, but the poor guy playing Jesus had to sit out until midnight, then go back the following morning at 5am!

After finishing my guard duty at 7pm I walked around town a bit, which was way livelier than normal. Lots of people originally from the area, who now work in the capital or other parts of the country, travel home for semana santa, so I saw lots of new faces I didn't recognize. I went and watched some of my friends begin work on their “alfombras”, enormous carpets made of dyed sawdust. Community groups from the different villages in the area spend the entire night before good friday constructing the alfombras, commonly with elaborate and intricate designs of various colors. I was already pretty exhausted from the days activities, so I went home to sleep after watching only the first layers of sawdust being layed out.

The following morning, good friday, was the big day. I left my house in full soldier atire—Shirt, skirt, cape, sandals with strings tied up to my calves, sword, lance, and of course the big metal helmet with the red stripe on the top (we got lots of jokes that it looked like a broom on our head!) En route to the church I stopped to admire the finished alfombras and chat with their proud but exhausted builders.

We began the activities with a procession around the town, stopping at each of the 14 alfombras to read from the bible and say prayers. The procession passed right over the sawdust alfombras, which were of course pretty much destroyed in the process.

The hardest part for me was that we had to kneel down on the hard street for about 5 minutes each time. I was not used to kneeling down like that, and it was even harder since my knees were bare. It was also getting pretty hot as the sun climbed higher in the sky. I did my best to tough it out without complaining—if the old women could do it without any apparent problems I had no excuse! Nonetheless, about half way through I was in a lot of pain and wondering if I'd be able to make it the whole way, when to my relief the captain of the soldiers called us to duck out and rest a bit. Little did I know, however, this was only because the hardest part was yet to come. After the procession we re-enacted the lead up to the crucifixion and the crucifixion itself. Jesus was judged, made to carry the cross, whipped (they even used fake blood to make it look more real), and eventually hoisted up onto an actual cross along with the 2 thieves. It was a very moving experience to see this powerful demonstration of the devotion and faith of the people in my community. Nonetheless, afterwords I was completely spent and went home to rest.

Saturday was a day of rest and relaxation for most of the community, with lots of people out and about in town. I watched some soccer games in the stadium in the afternoon, and one of the teams invited me to sit and hang out with them in the stands for a while after their game. I often find that the most memorable experiences I have are completely spontaneous and unplanned, and that's exactly what happened later that night when I was taking a walk through town. I ran into my friend Aníbel, who invited me to go help out with the Mass, which was just starting. We walked in through the back of the church, passed in front of everyone who were all taking their seats, and passed by the alter to the back off-stage area. I helped place some flowers in the stage during one part of the service, and also helped take the collection afterwords using a velvet bag on a stick. It was a surreal experience, again rather powerful, walking through the pews, overflowing with people in the aisles and out the enormous doors into the street; seeing old women reaching into their traditional huipil and finding a coin or two, giving it a kiss in blessing or crossing themselves before putting it into the bag; or a parent handing a coin to their small child and pointing to give it to me.

The following morning, Easter sunday, we had another early morning procession, beginning in the cemetery, to re-enact the resurrection. Jesus was back, this time in a triumphant white robe, and we again made stops at 14 stations en route to the church for Easter mass. This time we were celebrating, which meant two things were different: First, lots and lots of firecrackers and tremendously loud bombs going off ever few minutes. The second, more pleasant difference: we didn't have to kneel down like the previous processions. Nonetheless, I was still completely exhausted by the time we reached the doors of the church.

I reflected quite a bit throughout the week on all the new experiences I observed. I was here last year for semana santa as well, but this time I had a far better understanding of the activities and their cultural importance. It was amazing to see the time and effort put into the planning and execution of the various activities. Of course, I couldn't help but be a bit skeptical about priorities at times, thinking to myself “if only they spent half the time, effort and money on improving their schools as they spend on festivals...” It definitely makes me cringe a bit to think of the contrast between all the elaborate decorations for semana santa and the embarrassingly underfunded public schools. Nonetheless, the week certainly gave me a new respect for the community's ability to organize itself and take incredible action towards a common purpose.

More than anything, though, I think the week was very helpful for my integration into the community. Lots of people saw me during the various activities and I think they appreciated my participation and respect for their traditions. Lots of people even said that I should be Jesus next year... I think because I let my beard grow out a bit and it's the thickest of anyone in town, so they say I look like Jesus! The problem, however, is that they do the dramatization in K'iche, which would make it difficult for me to say the least.

In any case, last week I marked exactly one year since swearing in as an official Peace Corps volunteer (March, 27). I hope so strongly that semana santa will mark the beginning of a happy and successful second year of service.

2010-02-24T13:23:00.001-08:00

This morning was pretty eventful, with not one but two earthquakes about 4 hours apart. I was in my bed a bit before 5 a.m. when I felt the first one. I'm not sure if I was already awake or if the shaking woke me up, but I was still half asleep and wasn't sure I hadn't dreamed the whole thing until I went online and saw a facebook post from my friend about the quake. Then later that morning I was in a meeting with the school committee at the Chua chioj school—we had already commented about the earthquake—when another more powerful one struck. The ground shook for about 30 seconds, not powerful enough to do any damage but definitely noticeable. I've been a bit jumpy since then, and I keep on imagining I feel the ground shaking.

The last few weeks, the first of the new school year, have been filled with both exciting advances as well as frustrating setbacks. My goal this year is to get the schools to take more ownership of the program, with the idea of making it self-sustaining, or at least partially so, by the time I leave. In addition to promoting consistent hand-washing and teeth brushing systems and other health related routines and activities in the classrooms, my main push has been to encourage teachers to begin teaching their own health classes this year, as opposed to last year where I worked more directly with the students. It's been kind of a roller coaster so far—as I expected, it's taken a while to get teachers going with the classes. In fairness, they do have lots other responsibilities and legitimate obstacles. Nonetheless, some teachers have really impressed me with how seriously they're taking the program and have planned quality health lessons, complete with additional materials and engaging activities. One teacher in particular, who I've had a lot of problems with him in the past, completely surprised me. Last year his class always seemed out of control, and he was always yelling at the kids and I even saw him hit them with a belt on one occasion. I was expecting problems getting him to participate actively this year, but to my great surprise, when I arrived to his classroom he had a solid lesson on hand washing—complete with paper cutouts of soap, water, hands, etc— prepared for his students, who listened attentively and participated. I like to think that my influence may have had a positive impact on this teacher, but whatever the cause I hope he and all the 14 teachers I work with will continue to progress forward throughout the school year.

Last week I went to help out with the training of the new batch of healthy schools trainees, and led a mini-workshop modeled after the workshops I did with my teachers last month, in order to teach the trainees about doing trainings in their schools. Everyone seemed to enjoy the session and I got positive feedback from the trainees. It felt nice to have knowledge and insights to share from actual experience, and to not feel like a rookie anymore.

My experience today was not quite so encouraging. For the third week in a row the 2 teachers at chua-chioj—my smallest school but also one of my favorites because of the enthusiastic kids—were still not prepared with health classes, telling me that they'd been so busy they hadn't had time to start. We had, however, planned a meeting with the school committee to discuss possible infrastructure projects to work on this year. The earthquake, which interrupted the meeting halfway through, seemed to be nature's way of summing up the overall tone of the meeting. Despite the enthusiastic pitch Profe Luis and I gave to try to motivate the parents in charge of the school to take on one or more projects, their response was half-hearted at best. They told us that, while they knew what we were saying was correct and the school had lots of important needs, there were lots of obstacles as well. For example, a project to connect the school's bathrooms, which are currently not in use, would need to be approved by the community's water committee, which currently prohibits flush toilets due to the scarcity of water. I was told that the bathrooms were only built in the first place because it was a requirement for a school to have bathrooms, but they were never actually intended to be used. Another problem is that the current school committee did not seem to have coordinated very well with the previous committee, and were also reluctant to start a new project because their term was up in another 5 months and would be replaced by new members at that point. Another problem we discussed is that in order to get funding from Peace Corps, the project would also have to be supported and funded in part by both the local community as well as the larger municipality, which both seem to be difficult tasks. As I have already observed on several occasions, local politics here are complicated and, sadly, seem fairly corrupt as well. Getting the mayor to support a project without having the right connections or strings to pull will definitely be an uphill battle. Most disappointing, however, is what the men told me about the local community itself, which is divided and, I was told, not particularly interested in supporting the school. Even the school committee members themselves did not seem overly motivated, with one of them reading a newspaper in the middle of the meeting. I find myself feeling jealous of my friends who've been able to successfully do infrastructure projects in their schools, but I also have to keep in mind that they're working mostly with schools that have already been in the healthy schools for 3 years, while all mine are new to the program, and they're also mostly working in areas that are relatively better off economically than my communities, which makes a large difference in obtaining community support. Despite the frustration, I did feel satisfaction that I'm doing all that I feel I can to encourage progress, and hopefully today's meeting will inspire more steps forward, even if it takes time to change things.

2010-02-07T09:24:00.001-08:00

This week was the first week back to school of the year. It feels good to get back to my 'normal' routine after the last very full month, in which I hosted 4 different guests since Christmas.

The week before Christmas my friend Erin, a former Peace Corps volunteer in Peru who's now in medical school in Chicago, came to visit. I first met Erin in Peru when I led trips there for Broadreach during the summer of 2007. I spent 3 weeks with her helping coordinate a health-education service project very similar to the work I'm doing here in Guatemala. It was a wonderful experience and really motivated me to continue my efforts to join the PC. I was really excited to have the chance to show Erin my life and work here in Guatemala and we had a great time talking about the many similarities and differences between these two indigenous Latin-American countries. Erin was here on a scholarship from her medical school, and as part of the scholarship had to do some sort of community service while she was here. Since it was the week before Christmas (ie. When nobody was working) we decided to do some home visits in the communities I work in. We spent 3 days—a day in each community—walking from house to house, talking with the kids I work with and their families. We did a variety of activities, such as reading 'Mariquita Cochinita', a story about a little girl who learns about healthy habits, playing a matching game with one good habit and one bad habit (e.g. one card with clean hands and one card with dirty hands), doing a simple nutrition-themed jigsaw puzzle, and singing the various healthy schools songs. I was a bit nervous beforehand. If someone showed up at a typical American's door, invited themselves in, and told everyone inside to wash their hands and brush their teeth, they would probably get kicked out pretty quickly. But I was happy to be warmly welcomed into nearly all the homes we visited. Most of the houses had kids I knew (at least by face) from school, and most of the parents seemed to know who I was. I even got to use the little K'iche I know to explain who I was and why I was there. We worked primarily with the kids but also encouraged the adults and older siblings to join in. While many were shy and only wanted to watch at first, they all seemed curious and by bit they began to participate more in our activities. Many families gave us something small to eat or drink—an orange, a piece of bread or a cup of juice—a Guatemalan tradition for visitors to your house. Erin even was able to borrow some traditional clothing in a few of the homes and we took some laughter-filled photos with the families. It was an amazing experience for all of us, and quite useful for my work for several reasons. First, it allowed me reinforce the things I've been working on with the kids for the last year with the entire family. Second, it helped me build and strengthen relationships with parents, whose support I'll need in order for the project to be truly successful. Finally, the visits gave me a much more complete picture of the home environment the kids I work with live in on a day to day basis. I saw that there's a pretty wide spectrum of conditions, from relatively better off families that have nice homes with running water and letrines, TVs and other electronic equipment, and even a computer in at least one case, to families on the other side of the spectrum that live in complete squalor, with garbage strewn everywhere, no sanitary latrines or running water, and sick looking kids running around barefoot and filthy. The majority of the houses were in between these two extremes, and I think the experience gave me a much better (though still far from complete) perspective of the challenges rural Guatemalan kids face.

From my site we headed to Lake Atitlan for Christmas eve in Jaibalito, the same beautiful town Aaron and Aneta spent their honeymoon in.

We made reservations for dinner on December 24th at La Casa del Mundo, one of Guatemala's nicest hotels, and when we showed up to eat I was delightfully surprised to run into Jamie, one of my closest friends in the PC, who just happened to be staying there with his mom. We joined them for dinner, then had an unforgettable time partying it up back at the hostel afterwords—as with all Guatemalan holidays, there were lots of fireworks lit off, and also lots of food and drink.

We headed to Antigua on Christmas day, then on the 26th I went to the airport to pick up my brother Eric, who had a ticket to spend almost a full month with me in Guatemala. From the airport we went straight to Xenacoj where we spent a warm, laughter-filled afternoon with my host family.
I cooked curry for everyone, and my host sisters and mother braided Eric's hair in corn rows for him.

That evening we headed to the bus station in Guatemala city where we got on an overnight bus to Flores, far off in Guatemala's largest, jungle filled northernmost department of Petén. The plan was to spend 5 days hiking through the jungle to El Mirador, the remote ruins of an ancient Mayan city almost to the northern border with Mexico. In addition to Erin, Eric, and myself we were joined by another of my PC friends named Judy.

We arrived in Flores the following morning and spent several hours walking around the small city on an island in Lake Peten Itza. Eric and I saw a group of people gathered around the shore, looking at a small crocodile (it may have been an alligator, I'm not sure). We decided against swimming.

In the afternoon we climbed up onto the most decrepit, broken down looking bus I'd ever seen (after living in Guatemala a full year now that says a lot!) for the 4 hour journey further north to Carmelita, the tiny village of mainly wooden huts where we were to begin our hike. It was a beautiful ride through windy dirt roads surrounded by jungle and grassy fields, into a Guatemala I'd up to then never experienced.

The following morning we met our guide Wilter, our mule driver Nino, and the 5 mules who would be carrying our supplies—food, water (there were no sources on the route), tents, sleeping bags, clothes, etc. It felt like quite an expedition for only the 4 of us! Still fairly clean and well rested, we headed off on our 5 day hike. It took 2 full days of hiking to arrive at the main ruins. As much as I'm tempted to write about the miserable conditions we had to heroically forge through, the truth is that, fortunately, it was flat almost the whole way, the trail was good, it wasn't too hot or buggy at that time of year, and it didn't rain too much for the most part. Nonetheless, it was a long hike—I was told over 40 miles one way—and fairly monotonous. We had fun though, talking and getting to know our guide. While we quickly discovered that Wilter was not particularly knowledgeable about Mayan history or archeology—he was an illiterate campesino who'd lived his entire life in that one small village—he was a really fun, funny guy and nonetheless had lots of interesting information to share with us. He told us about harvesting 'chicle', the sap which comes from the tree of the same name, which is the main economic activity and source of income for most families in the region. He also told us about what it was like as a worker excavating the ruins at El Mirador, a job most of the men in the area had partaken in at one time or another. More than anything, we all agreed that he was a warm, friendly guy who genuinely did his best to make us feel comfortable and enjoy the trek. He was also a great cook—even if not the most sanitary one—and we enjoyed delicious, often freshly cooked meals throughout the entire trek. Nino, our 'arellero' –mule driver—was more quiet and reserved. I couldn't tell if he resented us or not, but after a few days he started to warm up to us and shared some of his stories and experiences as well.

During the trip we saw lots of wildlife—groups of spider monkeys in the canopy high above, jumping fearlessly from branch to branch; toucans, parrots, and many other tropical birds calling through the trees; coatis—kind of raccoon looking mammals with long tails (one got into our food one day and we found a hole bitten into our honey). We also saw some sort of wild pigs as well as two wild cats which quickly darted away as soon as they saw us, among various other birds, mammals, and insects.

After 2 days we arrived at our destination. While I hadn't done an overwhelming amount of research about El Mirador, I knew that it was a major ancient Mayan city which contained the largest Mayan temple ever built, and that it was also less restored and less visited than other ruins such as Tikal. I pictured vine covered stone temples, in the style of Indiana Jones. The reality, I was soon to discover, was quite a bit different. While El Mirador had indeed been an immense city, and indeed did contain the largest Mayan pyramid ever built, the city had been abandoned a thousand years ago, and in the meantime the entire site—including all the immense temples—had been completely buried under dense jungle. Instead of being covered by a few vines, the ruins were completely entombed by many feet of dirt, trees, and other vegetation. While some select parts have been excavated and restored, walking through most of the site you'd have no idea that you were in the middle of an ancient city. Even the largest temples looked like at first glance like steep hills (almost like mini-volcanoes), and the whole experience required a lot more imagination than I'd expected.

Nonetheless, once I adapted my expectations to meet reality, the ruins were no less impressive and breathtaking. It was impossible not to appreciate the immense, patient, power of nature; Earth's ability to reclaim what his hers and destroy even the most ambitious works of man. At the same time, it also made me begin to grasp the amount of human effort required to excavate and restore ruins, and gave me a new appreciation for more restored ruins I've visited such as Macchu Pichu in Peru and Teotihuacan in Mexico.

We spent a full day exploring the different parts of the city, including a number of different temples of varying sizes and a piece of a wall which had been restored. Underneath one of the temples there is also a locked door leading to a series of tunnels. By giving the guard a few quetzales tip he will open the door for you to go on a self-guided tour of the tunnels, including to see some 2,000 year old paintings with the original paint still undisturbed.

The entire place is a living archeological site. While other ruins and museums I've visited have lots of fenced off areas, no such barriers existed in El Mirador, and we were free to explore pretty much wherever we wanted. I was curious about the impact visitors had on the ruins, and tried to be conscientious to look and not touch. At one place we observed several dozen plastic bags of broken stone fragments, artifacts that we assumed had been categorized and organized like giant jigsaw puzzles to be reassembled at a later time and place.
We ran into 2 other trekkers and their guide, who it turned out knew about the Maya and the history of the site, and they graciously invited us to tag along and listen to his informative explanations of things, which I found quite interesting. Both days we climbed to the top of large pyramids to watch the sunset. While the afternoon clouds frustrated our efforts, the view was still amazing—the various pyramids were the only places to go to get a panoramic view of the surrounding jungle for many miles in every direction.

After 3 days—2 days hiking and 1 exploring the ruins, we spent 2 more days hiking home. The trip back was quieter, as we were getting tired and wanted a shower, but still fun. The last night in the jungle was New Years eve, and we camped at El Tintal, which we learned was a smaller ancient Mayan city (apparently there are quite a few of them in northern Guatemala) with a pretty large pyramid of its own. We climbed to the top and were finally rewarded with a proper sunset. I stayed up for an extra hour, and as the sounds of the jungle at night began to come alive I was rewarded with an incredible full moon rise over the horizon. Using the moonlight, I carefully walked down the steep steps of the temple, through a bit of jungle back to our campsite, where our guides had made a fire for dinner. I had bought supplies for s'mores back in Flores and was saving them for New Years, and in addition to ourselves we cooked marshmallows for our guides and other hikers camping in the same site.

At a few minutes to midnight the 4 of us climbed back up to the top of the pyramid, where we counted down to the new year and probably woke up the entire jungle with our shouts of celebration.

After a cold but glorious shower back in Carmelita the next day, we bid goodbye to our guides and headed back to Flores, where we again took the night bus back to Guatemala city. After bidding goodbye to Erin, who had to fly home to begin classes, and Judy, the group was reduced to Eric and myself.

I spent the next several days preparing for the workshops I had planned to conduct with the 3 schools I work with the following week. I created and edited documents and other materials for a variety of activities, typed the agenda and went over it numerous times, called the school directors and the school superintendent (my boss) to confirm the plans, bought snacks and drinks for everyone, and ended up making hundreds of photocopies and spending several hours just organizing all the materials. I had warned Eric that I really needed to focus for these days, since it was really important for me to start the year off on the right foot. He helped me organize some of the handouts I prepared. The night before, I baked 2 loaves of banana bread, the finishing touch, and was ready for the 5 hour workshop the following day.

I was really nervous—my time in Guatemala has prepared me to expect the unexpected, as well as the nearly given rule that nothing will start on schedule. Sure enough, we started 45 minutes late, but after that everything went great. My primary goal this year is to work with the teachers and transition them into taking more direct ownership of the healthy schools program, with the long-term goal of making it a fully self-sustainable program in the future. With that end in mind, I divided the activities into 3 parts: First, addressing general teaching techniques and methods; second, reviewing the Healthy Schools program and the tools used to implement it; and third, setting priorities and formulating specific plans and strategies for each school. I tried to plan activities that would force the teachers to take initiative and participate actively, and was nervous about how willing they would be. Nonetheless, they really impressed me by taking each activity seriously, participating more than I had expected, and even taking notes on a lot of the things we did. In the end we actually ran out of time, which was fine because it gave me the chance to do the planning activities another day with each school individually. At the end of the day I gave out official diplomas to each teacher, and had them fill out evaluation forms. I was very pleased to receive very positive feedback as well as some great suggestions.

The following day I gave a shorter, 2 hour workshop with the school directors from all the area schools—over 30 in all, more than I had originally thought. I knew that I couldn't work individually with each school, but the idea was to give an introduction to the Healthy Schools program and some of the basic information and recommendations about how to begin implementing the program in their schools, and if there were any schools that showed more enthusiasm I could give them more information and maybe make some visits to their teachers and kids. In the end the workshop was mediocre at best. I was again nervous, and never really relaxed the entire time because it seemed that nobody was really listening or cared much about what I had to say. It was discouraging, but at the same time it made me realize how much of a difference there was in the schools I've already been working with for almost a year, most importantly in the teachers' attitudes and motivation to implement the healthy schools program in their schools. Instead of seeing the less than effective workshop as a setback, I saw it as a vindication of the last year I've spent in the 3 schools I work in. Despite the slow rate of change, which often leaves me feeling immensely frustrated, my experiences from the 2 vastly different workshops showed me the undeniable progress we've made.

I spent the next week hanging out with Eric. While I was anxious to relax a bit after the past few intense weeks, Eric was understandably eager to explore my town and more of Guatemala. I spent another weekend at Lake Atitlan, first back in Jaibalito—where I was starting to become a regular—then in Panajachel, the main tourist city on the lake, where we spent a night out dancing to say goodbye to 2 PC friends that decided to leave early and go home to the U.S. We also met up with Tom, a high school friend of ours from back in Connecticut. Tom came back to my house with us, and I spent a few days showing him around my town, walking him to a few of my schools and following up with the teachers.

That Friday we headed back to Antigua where, after another night out dancing (Eric did pretty well for not speaking Spanish and having never danced either Reggaeton or Salsa...) we picked up our dad at the airport in Guatemala city the next morning. We hung out for 2 nights at a nice hotel in Antigua (the kind I would never think of staying in normally) and checked out the city. It's nice to visit a familiar place with new visitors, because they often give you a new perspective and make you notice details you would normally overlook. In my year in Guatemala I've been to Antigua many times, and am normally preoccupied thinking about where I'm going to eat or hang out with my friends. So, it was nice to have my Dad around to point out all sorts of things—stuff like old doors and other architectural details—I'd never noticed before. To be totally honest, I probably won't notice them again, but it was still nice, and more than anything it was fun hanging out with my Dad. Eric got sick and spent most of the time in the hotel room throwing up and having the runs, so I got plenty of time alone with Dad.

Before his arrival, while planning the trip itinerary and transportation, I gave my Dad a rundown of the different transportation options. I told him all about riding on “Camionetas”, the old American school buses I've written all about in previous blog entries. Thinking back on my own first impressions of this preferred method of Guatemalan transportation—the disorientation and discomfort of riding crammed in with a hundred other people, many of whom haven't bathed any time recently, passing other buses speeding way too fast uphill around blind curves, all while listening to blaring Ranchera music—I wasn't sure it would be my Dad's cup of tea. Nonetheless, he was adamant about wanting to experience how I REALLY lived and insisted on at least giving it a try.

The first bus was no big deal, but when we switched in Chimaltenango to get on the 2 and a half hour bus to Quiche, every seat was full, forcing us to sit in the perilous 3rd seats, leaving about half the cheek hanging off the edge into the aisle. I was worried about how Dad would hold up, but he said he was fine, and was at least holding in any discomfort quite stoically. Fortunately, after about half an hour the bus emptied out enough for us all to to get real seats, and the rest of the ride passed comfortably without further incident, as did as all the other bus rides we took throughout the week.

My dad specifically planned his trip to coincide with my town's “Feria”--the once yearly festival all Guatemalan towns have, complete with carnival rides and games, lots of vendors, music, dancing, fireworks, and of course, massive amounts of alcohol. Things often get out of hand, and again, I was a bit worried about how well my dad would fit into all this. Perhaps I should have had him come during a more tranquilo week, I thought, but again he was insistent about getting the authentic Guatemalan experience.

In the end we all had a great time. I showed him all around my town, and was always proud when a little kid (or adult for that matter) shouted my name enthusiastically, “TRAAVEES, TRAAVEES!!”, as we passed. I introduced him to some of my friends and was surprised to see both how many people I know and also to hear some of the nice things people had to say about me to my dad—though I had to translate them for him, of course! I took him to eat Guatemalan food at the many food stands set up in the streets, and we watched crazy music and dancing in the park, including Convite, the uniquely Guatemalan tradition where men and women dress up in Halloween-like costumes—warriors, werewolves and other animals, even gigantic babies, and dance around in circles for hours on end. (After watching 15 minutes of Convite Dad described it as one of the most bizarre sights he'd ever seen, I'd have to agree with him.)

In the end the only thing we saw that was a bit scary was when we walked by the town hall and saw two guys, shirtless and tied up tightly to the building's columns, surrounded by what seemed like a mob of people watching them, as well as what seemed to be their wives and other family members distraught and trying to convince people to untie the men. I saw 2 police officers walk by, not making any attempt to do anything about the 2 men tied up in front of them. I later found out the story: the men had been tied up for shooting guns off into the air—they weren't trying to hurt anyone, but nonetheless upset people with their recklessness. They were untied and let go without harm after what seemed like not too long. It was the first time I've seen the much talked about 'traditional justice' practiced in rural Guatemalan towns, and hopefully the last.

After leaving the feria in my town (delayed when I forgot Eric's passport in my room and had to go back to get it from Quiche), we spent another 2 nights back on the lake in Jaibalito—by this point I really am practically a regular in town. We rented a beautiful cottage on the lake—again the same one Aaron and Aneta rented on their honeymoon, and enjoyed some nice meals, happy hours, as well as relaxation and down time.

The day before Eric and Dad's flight we headed back by boat then bus to Guatemala city, where we spent the night at the Grand Tikal Futura hotel, one of the fanciest in Guatemala (fortunately I was able to talk my way into getting the local Guatemalan rate, less than half of the rate for foreigners). We enjoyed lounging in the pool and the hotel's 3 jacuzzis for their last afternoon.

After a short nights sleep, we got up at 4 in the morning and said our goodbyes at the airport after a really nice trip together in Guatemala—a week for dad and a month for Eric. I headed back to the hotel, where I took advantage of the fancy room, cable TV, and pool access for a few more hours before heading home.

Last week was the first week back at classes in my schools, and I'm now trying to get back to my old 'normal' routine after both the excitement and stress of being a tour guide for the last 6 weeks. I had meetings in 2 of my schools to complete the planning activities we didn't have time to do earlier, and was again cautiously optimistic about the prospects for change this year. The schools and teachers seem to have a new enthusiasm and willingness to cooperate and take initiative. 2 schools even want to do infrastructure projects, beginning with the construction of new water faucets. We'll see what pans out—whether we can leverage this early energy into real progress or whether the enthusiasm will wane remains to be seen, but I feel I've done my part for the time being.

For my first visit to the schools I didn't have a whole lot planned—the goal is for teachers to begin teaching their own health lessons this year, so I don't want to create the expectation that I'm always going to come with activities. Nonetheless I did bring one surprise—my friend Mark wrote a parody of a Vicente Fernandez song with new lyrics related to things like drinking clean water and washing your hands with soap and water. I brought the song and sang it, with backup music from my MP3 player, for all the classes at my 3 schools. I even borrowed a big sombrero to make it look more authentic. In the end I wasn't sure if they appreciated it or thought I was crazy. As normal, probably a bit of both.

2009-12-05T09:42:00.000-08:00

I had a pretty eventful few weeks leading up to thanksgiving.

After re-uniting in Xela with Oliver and Jamie, my companions from the previous 2 half-marathons, we ran the Xela half-marathon together on Nov 15^th. It was a lot different from Coban or Antigua, since it was at over a mile of elevation. In the morning before the race it was so cold you could see your breath, but once the sun came out I started warming up, especially after hitting the several hills on the course. I felt great, though, and it was definitely my best race yet! I finished in 1 hr 47 min, almost 10 minutes faster than in Coban. It always feels so incredible to cross the finish line, and the fact that I seem to be getting stronger for each race motivates me to keep running here at my site. I've even considered attempting a full marathon, but on second thought, I've always thought running a marathon could be one of those things I'll do when I'm 40 and need to prove to myself that I'm still young...

After the race the three of us took a few days off to travel. After the race we went to the hot springs at Fuentes Georginas for a post-race soak. On Monday morning we headed to Jaime's site in San Marcos, almost at the base of Tajamulco, Central America's highest volcano, and only a short distance from the Pacific Coast. Looking across the valley from my site, I can just see to San Marcos, and what I believe is Tajamulco, and I've been wanting to visit for months. The first afternoon we went to visit some friends of Jamie's that own a small coffee plantation. The family was incredibly warm and inviting, and were proud to show us around and explain the whole process of growing and making coffee. They fed us a great lunch in their dining room (I'll never forget the enormous lazy Susan on the table), and afterwords we were serenaded to a few marimba songs from the father and son in the living. Looking around the house you could sense it had lots of history and character. It was a really incredible cultural experience, as well as being a lot of fun. It was a side of Guatemala I'd never seen before, and really impressed upon me the diversity of the country.

The next morning we visited Jamie's park, where he works as a sustainable community eco-tourism volunteer. The park's most notable attraction is having Quetzales, Guatemala's beautiful national bird. While we didn't see any Quetzales on our hike, we did see and hear lots of tropical birds and had some incredible views. It was striking to feel how different the climate was—in contrast to the dry, temperate air of the highlands where I live, San Marcos is lush, warm, and green, with spectacular mountains sloping downwards towards the Pacific. At one point we came to a large vine, which we used as a Tarzan-style rope swing, blindly trusting Jamie's assertion that the vine was strong enough to hold.

From San Marcos we made the long-haul series of bus transfers (stopping for donuts at the Mennonite bakery in Xela) to Antigua, then to the Peace Corps center for 3 days of in-service training. The workshops were very helpful, covering many of the educational and health related topics we had requested during previous trainings. It gave me new ideas, new perspective, and new inspiration to go back to my schools for another year of trying to make a difference. It was also great being back with everyone from my training group and hanging out in Antigua after work. It's crazy to think we've been in country almost 11 months, and still have 30 of the original 32 volunteers we flew together to Guatemala from Washington with last January!

The following weekend was the confirmation for Erik and Yelmi, my host siblings from training in Santo Domingo Xenacoj, which now seems ages ago. I enjoyed spending time with the family, helping them get set up and decorate the house the day before, and celebrating with yummy food, drinks, and dancing!

When I got home after the weekend, I spent several hours rushing to prepare materials for my first English class. The class went well, although turnout was not as high as I'd expected. People have been asking me about teaching English ever since I got here, and I'm hoping the classes will also be a good way for me to meet more people in my community.

I spent the next few days in my room cooking for Thanksgiving. I've really enjoyed learning to cook new dishes in my free time the past months, and volunteered to make lots of things-- Home-made bagels (sesame, cinnamon raisin, and jalapaño garlic), 2 apple pies (one gluten-free for Courtenay), banana nut bread, carrot raisin bread, and last but not least, mashed potatoes! After baking for a day and a half, I carefully packaged up the goodies for the long ride to the coast.

Courtenay and I left before 5 in the morning, and were able to catch a ride for several hours in the back of a pickup truck. Despite being VERY cold, it was a fun ride and saved us time and money. We met the rest of our group in Antigua and took a private shuttle to the Pacific Coast in Monterico, where we rented a beautiful house on the beach for the next 4 days. The house was really nice, complete with pool, hammocks, and even air-conditioning, a luxury I haven't seen anywhere else in Guatemala! Shortly after arriving, we felt a small earthquake, the second I've felt in Guatemala. The first night, as I was walking down from the rooftop terrace, I noticed a faint red glow in the sky. I paused, expecting to see a fire-work burst momentarily, but the glow stayed still. After a few seconds, I realized I was looking at the distant lava flows of Pacaya, Guatemala's most active volcano, which I had seen earlier in the day while en route from Antigua. During the day you could clearly see the volcano, but the light from the sun made it too bright to see the lava flows (like stars during the day). At night it was reversed; through the darkness you could see the lava flowing down into what appeared to be empty space. One morning I woke up to watch the sunset, and the light was just enough to see the lava flowing against the conical silhouette of Pacaya. The sunrises and sunsets over the water were also amazing!

The weekend was pretty relaxing. I enjoyed meeting new people, long walks on the beach with my good friends Susy and Courtenay, and of course lots of good food and drink. The buffet for the meal was incredible, and we had lots of leftovers for the next day.

There hasn't been much going on since I've been back home. I had my second English class a few days ago, which the students seem to be enjoying. I'm also beginning to plan for the teacher training workshops I'll lead the first week of January. I'm getting excited for a visit during Christmas from my friend Erin, a returned Peace Corps volunteer from Peru, as well as my brother Eric! We're hoping to do a 5 day hike through the Jungle to the Mayan Ruins of 'El Mirador'. My Dad's planning to visit for a week in mid-January, and Eric will stay for a month before flying back with him, so I should have a lot going on for the next few months!

2009-11-13T07:59:00.000-08:00

So I was recently told that somebody in Ichomchaj, one of the communities I work in, gave their newborn baby the name Travis. I went to the health center to see if I could confirm the information. They weren't able to find the record, but I'm going to keep investigating and see if I can find my namesake, if he exists.

Then, this morning as I was shaving in the bathroom, I heard a knock on my door. I answered it to find a young man that I'd never seen before, who shyly introduced himself, in imperfect Spanish, and explained his problem. He wanted to give his daughter a name in English, and asked if I could help him out. I invited him in and wrote out a list of some female names, mostly the names of my female relatives. That definitely was NOT part of the Peace Corps job description, and despite my being a bit uncomfortable about how what Guatemalans frequently trying to imitate American culture says about how they feel about their own culture, was amusing anyway.

I guess I'm becoming more popular around town these days, since doing my mini-summer camp with the kids the last few weeks. I also put up signs for my free English classes I'm starting and have already got lots of interest. I can't walk down the street these days without people, still mostly kids but more adults now, shouting my name as I pass. I guess it's a nice feeling.

2009-11-05T05:40:00.000-08:00

I'd been planning to go on a 3 day adventure today--The first 2 days biking about 100km to Lake Atitlan, and the 3rd day climbing the San Pedro Volcano. I was excited to visit several of my Peace Corps friends en route. Alas, as I was streaming NPR this morning I heard there was a hurricane off the coast of Nicaragua--I looked outside and saw a steady rain falling, which is supposed to last the entire week. The bike trip will have to wait for another weekend and I have the rainy day blues. Bummer.

I watched the 6th game of the World Series last night. Roberto invited me to his house and we watched the game with Spanish commentary. The Yankees beat the Phillies with 4 of the same players I had seen them beat the Braves with my Dad and Eric, also in game 6, at the old Yankee stadium 13 years ago. I used to be a big Yankees fan, but in the last 10 years I have moved on to other interests and largely forgot about baseball. Nonetheless, watching the game last night brought back a flood of memories and nostalgia. I flashed back to lazy afternoons at Yankee Stadium with Eric, sneaking into more expensive seats and causing all sorts of mischief.(Seeing Rudy Giuliani on TV made me remember the time we snuck into seats that turned out to be owned by the Republican National Party, and played it cool when Mayor Giuliani and his entourage came and sat in the same row only 10 seats down--I got his autograph on a ball I had caught earlier in the game.) I also flashed back to many late October nights watching post-season Yankees games in the living room of my mom's house in Connecticut. Games would often run into extra innings, and despite it being a school night Mom could never get us to go to bed before the game was over. Eric and I would struggle to keep our eyes open, sometimes until as late as 1 in the morning, and show up exhausted to school the next morning, smiling brightly despite the sleep deprivation and constant hostility of Red Sox fans. And last but not least, I flashed back to watching the Yanks with Gramma at her house in Darien. As the crickets chirped and fireflies began to break the late summer dusk outside, we'd be glued to the game. Gramma would tell us stories about watching the Yankees win when she was a kid. Seeing the Yanks win always put her in a good mood.

Seeing the Yankees win last night was bittersweet. I enjoyed seeing them win again--mainly because of the old memories it brought up to the surface. Nonetheless, seeing the game, the aging stars from the 90s, also made me realize how much my own life has changed and how much I've lost just in the last year. It also made me home sick. The old Yankee stadium-- the house that Ruth built, where Eric and I used to go to games while visiting my Dad in New York, was demolished just a year ago. Mom's condo at River Run, where we'd stay up late watching playoff games, was sold just a few months ago after she got re-married. Most sadly, though, a year ago this month-- while I was in Colombia learning to paraglide, ecstatic after having just received my invitation from the Peace Corps to come to Guatemala after a really tough year-- I learned that my Gramma's house had caught fire and was seriously damaged. While Gramma miraculously made it out of the fire unhurt, and we all initially assumed the house would be repaired quickly, it was not to be. Gramma died about 4 months ago due to complications from a broken hip, right as the house she'd lived in for the last 25 years was about to be demolished, and I have to wonder whether she would have had the strength to keep going if she hadn't been through so much upheaval in her life in the previous months. It's a shame she wasn't here to see the game last night; it would have made her very happy.

Watching baseball when I was young, I relished in the simple pleasures of seeing my team win (which happened a lot in the late 90s). Watching the game last night, I saw baseball from a different perspective, even as a metaphor for life in ways-- the countless individual plays and moments adding up to great victories and defeats; the arbitrary silliness but also genuine fun of rooting for your group (ie team) based on nothing more substantial than the fact that they play in the city where you're from; the increasing role of big corporate money in controlling outcomes (the Yankees have by far the highest payroll in baseball). Mostly, however, I saw last nights game as a reminder of both the continuous and ephemeral aspects of life.

2009-11-04T08:53:00.000-08:00

School vacations have been pretty good so far. I miss my schools and kids, but have made up for it by running a mini-summer camp 3 mornings a week for the kids in my town. I was a bit worried I'd be overwhelmed, but so far the number of kids that show up has been ranging between 20 and 60ish, which has been more or less manageable. I've been teaching some basic English phrases, doing songs like the Itsy Bitsy spider in both English and Spanish, games like Simon Says and sharks and minnows, and American sports like kickball and capture the flag. Capture the flag seems to be the favorite activity. It was a bit crazy the first few days as the kids were learning the rules and there seemed to be quite a lot of cheating, but we had a great boys vs girls game yesterday morning with some real teamwork and strategy on both sides. I'm also trying to incorporate educational aspects into the activities, for example by talking about hand washing and teeth brushing, and also really emphasizing the kids not throwing the trash on the ground and having everyone pick up trash from the ground for a few minutes each day. Everyone seems to be having fun, which is the most important thing. I must admit, I am as well, especially when the kids get along and I can play the games too!

I've also been doing lots more longer bike trips now that I have more free time, exploring and checking out different places nearby. There are some really gorgeous places I'd never seen before, and I love the sense of freedom, adventure, and accomplishment of doing long bike rides, a joy I haven't had much of these last few years. I'm hoping the biking will be good cross training for the Xela half marathon, which I'm running next weekend with Oliver and Jamie.

Last weekend for Halloween, which is celebrated here in addition to the more important all saints day, I joined lots of my other Peace Corps friends high in the Cuchamatanes mountains, the highest range in Central America, for a famous celebration in the town of Todos Santos Cuchamatanes. The town is famous for the yearly horse races they run on the morning of November 1^st. After some Halloween partying the night before, we checked out the races the next morning, which were pretty interesting. Brightly dressed local men in varying states of intoxication raced their horses back and forth down a track, yelling and waving their arms. I asked but wasn't able to really determine the reason or history behind the tradition, but it was fun to watch anyway. The U.S. Ambassador also showed up as well—he's a really nice guy and has made a big effort to be involved with PC volunteers, and we enjoyed chatting with him. I jokingly asked him if he was jealous of all the excitement his counterpart in the Honduran embassy was getting these days (after the coup a few months ago.) I'm not sure if he appreciated the joke. The next morning we went to the cemetery, where people were making the yearly visit to deceased friends and relatives to leave food, light candles, and in some instances even play marimba music at the grave. I reflected on how the graveyard demonstrated a different Guatemalan attitude towards dying, where it is seen more as a natural part of life. Some people were definitely mourning very seriously, but the overall tone seemed to be more of celebration and honoring the dead. There were even vendors walking around selling ice cream and other snacks; not something you'd probably see in an American cemetery.

2009-11-04T08:16:00.000-08:00

I imagine back in my home state of Connecticut they're starting to enjoy the fall weather and colors. That's definitely something I miss here in Guatemala. The only 2 seasons here are the rainy season and the dry season, but there's been a drought here the last few months so even that distinction hasn't meant too much. The idea of having 4 seasons as different as the ones we have in New England is completely foreign here. I try to explain it to people, but it's hard to describe snow to someone that's never seen it. One thing I never realized before is how the changing seasons give a sense of flow and even order to the passing of time, a sense I miss here. Here, it sometime seems that time doesn't pass at all, and I need to remind myself that I've been here in Guatemala about 10 months, quickly coming on a whole year!

The school year here is different and is coming to an end this week—Guatemalan kids are now starting what would be the equivalent of their 'summer vacation' until January. I have mixed feelings about completing my first school year here. The last month or so teachers seemed very busy with all sorts of different paper work and meetings, so it was hard to get them to even stay in the classroom during my lessons, much less continue with the changes I would have like to have made a priority. Nonetheless, looking back I think we definitely made progress in all my 3 schools. For example, in Centro Ichomchaj, my largest school, they only have 1 sink for over 200 kids. In order to implement a hand washing system for before the school snack, I suggested they obtain plastic barrels with spigots at the bottom for each classroom to use. To my surprise, they did. It's not a permanent solution—building more actual sinks is something I hope to do next year-- but it works fine and kids are able to wash their hands and brush their teeth much easier. In my smallest school, chua chioj, one of my favorite teachers Luis suggested I make a final exam for his class based on the material I taught them over the past 7 months. I was pleased when, overall, the class did fairly well, averaging a score of about 75%, with several scores in the 90%s and one perfect score. I try to tell myself that at the end of the day if even some of the students absorb the information I'm trying to impart my work will be worth it. Looking back, we also did some fun, interactive activities which will hopefully serve as a model for teachers, such as teaching about recycling by making piñatas out of recycled newspapers and plastic bags.

I'm trying to plan some activities in the community to keep myself busy during these months. First, I'm planning a 'mini summer camp' for the kids in my town, where I'll teach them sports and games from the U.S. like kickball, capture the flag, and duck duck goose as well as doing songs, teaching some basic English, and other educational activities and community service like picking up trash around town. I'm also going to start teaching English classes once a week. I'm also hoping to paint a big map of the world on the wall outside of the elementary school. I'm also continuing my K'iche language classes. It's going, slowly, but I'm finally able to form some basic sentences and understand a little bit when people speak to me slowly. I'll see how things continue to go.

Today I've been invited to attend a graduation ceremony for the 6^th graders at one of the elementary schools I work in. I was very touched that the students themselves took the initiative to invite me, and reminded me not to forget, so I know it's important to them that I attend. For most if not all of the graduating 6^th graders, they're probably the first generation in their family to attend even elementary school. I asked them how many were planning on continuing on to middle school next year. Of the 25 or so graduating 6^th graders, only 3, all girls, are planning to continue studying in middle school next year. There are lots of barriers in the way. Lots of kids have to work to support their large families with many mouths to feed. Parents, most of whom didn't go to school themselves, often don't understand the importance of education and don't or can't afford to support their kids going to school. And in the case of more remote schools like the one I'm going to today, just getting to the only middle school in the area will involve the 3 girls walking almost an hour, down a steep ravine then back up the other, under the hot sun. Then, after classes they'll have to do the same thing in the dark. Despite all the obstacles and challenges to education here, I'm inspired by the maturity and commitment these girls have shown in order to become educated and improve their lives.

I've also had some incredible adventure the last few months, the most memorable of which was going back to Colorado to be the best man in my dear friends Aaron and Aneta's wedding outside of Steamboat Springs. It was so wonderful to get back to my old home, if only for a few days, see old friends and of course, party and have the time of our lives. The party continued the following week when they came down to Guatemala for their honeymoon and I got to be tour guide. We had a blast, first in Antigua, then in my site, then exploring lake Atitlan for several nights. The highlight of the trip (and possibly the most fun I've had in Guatemala) was renting a power boat and waterskiing and wakeboarding through the sunny, volcano ringed lake the whole weekend.

Last weekend was a religious festival in my town. Courtenay and I were invited to participate in an event to go to Huehuetenango, light torches at a church there and bring them back on our bicycles. It ended up being a crazy, fun day and was great for my integration into the community here. Before coming back on the bikes we spent a few hours hanging out at a mini-water park complete with water slides and lots of statues including a huge T-Rex overlooking the pool with water coming out of his mouth. People would climb up and jump or dive off into the less than 6 feet of water. Needless to say it wasn't the safest experience but was very fun. I thought we would bike all or at least most of the way back here to town, but in the end we ended up not getting on our bikes until 4 in the afternoon, so were only able to pedal an hour or so before piling our bikes back on the truck and climbing in the mini van. The ride we did do was fun though, and we saw an unbelievable complete double rainbow! Back at the edge of town, we got out and got back on our bikes, lit the torches, and rode into town to lots of cheer, fanfare, and of course—FIREWORKS (It wouldn't be a Guatemalan celebration without...) The next day the festival continued, and Courtenay and I participated (and lost) a contest where she fed me juice out of a baby bottle, and we ran a 3km road race which ended up being scandalized when it was revealed some of the contestants had secretly rode bikes part of the way. Other memorable recent weekends include riding my bike to Momostenango again in order to go to my friend Sarah's birthday party outside of Xela, and spending the night at some beautiful hotsprings called Fuentes Georginas for a welcome party a few weeks ago. Yesterday I rode my bike to Quiche. It was a beautiful ride and only took less than an hour and a half. I hung out with my friend Susy and it ended up being a really nice day.

2009-08-17T19:43:00.001-07:00

I haven't written in a while and wanted to write a quick post before I get too far behind.

I decided on a whim to run the Antigua half marathon last month. I was worried because I'd barely run since Coban 3 weeks earlier and felt that I'd gotten out of shape. To my surprise, I cut my time from Coban by 16 minutes to 1:40 min. It was an awesome day! Despite the cobblestones, it was a lot flatter and felt wonderful the whole day afterwords.

I spent the next week at the Peace Corps center, the first few days having training/meetings for our 'reconnect' 3-4 months after swearing in, and the next 3 days receiving K'iche classes.

I spent the weekend having fun in Antigua, and on Sunday headed home with some groceries, a new toaster (which has been more exciting than you can possibly imagine), and TANGO, my tiny new pet turtle!

Besides having a new pet, the other big recent news is getting a new site mate, Courtenay. I've really enjoyed hanging out and getting to know her, and it's nice to have someone here that really understands the difficulties of PC life, and to speak in English to. We hang out at each others house, get meals together, go in to Quiche to hang out, etc. My only concern is that hanging out too much with Courtenay will be detrimental to my community integration, but so far we've expanded each other's Guatemalan social circles by introducing each other to our Guatemalan friends. Courtenay works at the health center, so I've met a lot of new people there through her.

My 26th birthday was a few weeks ago and it was very memorable. Courtenay and Jose, a Guatemalan friend of ours, woke me up at 5:50 with firecrackers outside my window--a Guatemalan tradition. Later, my friend Anthony called me, and had his entire English class serenade me with a heavily-accented version of Happy Birthday! That night I hosted a dinner of BBQ chicken and curried vegetables with Minga and Lorenzo--a middle-aged couple I've befriended, and Jose (Courtenay was unfortunately sick with Amoebas at the time). It was a birthday I won't soon forget!

Work continues to move forward. I've been teaching classes about nutrition for the last few weeks, and am coordinating a trip for all my 3 schools to visit a school in the area that's already been working with the program for several years and has already been certified as 'healthy' at the end of the month. I've also attended several parents meetings at 2 of my schools to introduce myself and give a little presentation about the healthy schools program, my recommendations for projects and how I can help them move forward with them, etc.

I'm headed to Guatemala City tomorrow, then flying north to Colorado the day after. This Friday I'm going to be best man in my good friends Aaron and Aneta's wedding in Steamboat! Then next week they're coming here to Guatemala for their honeymoon! It's going to be a great 2 weeks, more to come soon.

2009-07-17T19:43:00.003-07:00

The last 2 weeks have been 2 of the most diverse, disjointed weeks of my life.

I left my house 2 weeks ago en route to Coban, one of Guatemala's major cities in the country's tropical northern province of Alta Verapaz, with the goal of running the city's half marathon. The plan was to run the race on Sunday, then spend the next 3 days traveling and getting to know the area before heading to a conference at PC headquarters on Thursday and Friday, and finishing off the week with the 4th of July bash on Saturday. It was to be my first true “vacation” since I've been here (as opposed to a weekend getaway), and I was very excited! I'd been training for the half marathon since January—over 5 months—and it was delayed for 6 weeks due to concerns about swine flu, and the waiting only increased my anticipation.

Due to a landslide a few months ago the direct route to Coban has been closed, so I was forced to take the long route through Guatemala City—a grand total of 9 hours on buses. I decided to split the trip up by going to visit my host family from training, and spent a great night visiting and cooked a yummy pancake breakfast for everyone in the morning. I took off after breakfast and arrived in Coban mid-afternoon to pick up my official timing sensor 'chip' and a bunch of free stuff. I met up with my good friends Oliver and Jamie and we walked around a bit and had a pasta dinner before heading to bed for a good night sleep before the race.

The next morning, on our way to the starting line, the streets became more and more crowded, filled with the over 3,000 participants and many more spectators. I spent the first 3km or so of the course ducking around people, trying to find a comfortable rhythm and get in front of the main crowd. The mass of people eventually dispersed and I settled into a pace which seemed brisk but manageable. The first part of the course was out to a suburb of Coban about 7km away, then back. The streets were lined with cheering spectators shouting encouragement, but the adrenaline wore off as I made my way out of town. I got a surge after the first half hour, however, when the front-runners, 2 Kenyans (the Kenyan national team had come out to participate in the event) came sprinting by on their way back. I was feeling pretty good as I turned the corner to head back to Coban, but by the halfway point (between 10-11 km, the full half marathon is 21km) I was starting to wonder whether I'd pushed to hard in the beginning. I was still on track to finish in about 1hr 45 min but was starting to lose steam. I continued pushing kilometer after kilometer, trying to avoid stopping to walk for as long as possible and always finding the strength to go just a bit further. There weren't any big hills, but quite a few gradual rolling hills, and the second half seemed to be more uphill than the first half (although it may just have been that I was more tired). The most frustrating part was arriving back in Coban with over 5 km left to go—We ran all the way back through downtown, then out the other side for another few km before turning back around. By that point I was really hurting. As much of a rush as the race had been at first, by that point I just wanted it to be over and really had to continually force myself to keep going. I tried telling myself that the more I pushed myself the quicker it would be over. I was able to keep going as the kilometers continued to pass by—13, 15, 18 (they seemed to go by VEERRRY slowly at the time, it almost makes me cringe to write the numbers so casually here!), and finally I arrived at 20, just 1 more km to go. After grabbing a final water bag from the people handing them out on the sidelines, gulping down what I could and squirting the rest on my face, I made the final push. The finish was in the municipal stadium, and after passing under the seats out to the field, I was disappointed to see I still had to do an almost complete lap around the track to reach the finish line. I made it, however, and was even able to summon up the energy for a short (admittedly rather pathetic) sprint the last 100 feet or so. I ended up finishing in a respectable 1 hr 56 min. I met up with my friends—Jamie and Oliver had both finished quicker than me, and we'd met up with several other PC volunteers who continued to come in over the next half hour or so. I was still exhausted an hour later, and it hurt to walk for the next 3 days.

That night we stayed at a beautiful hostel on the river a few hours from Coban, and the next morning, monday, went rafting at my friend Oliver's site. He's an eco-tourism volunteer, and his entire project is to collaborate with the development of the rafting business in an aldea (a small village) on a remote river. We had a crew of 5 PC volunteers and 2 of their friends, and we had a great time rafting the class 1-5 rapids. There were some pretty intense parts where we got tossed around pretty good down the rapids, over around, and through the rocks, and also slow tranquil parts where we got out and swam. Alta Verapaz is much more tropical and lush than where I live, and the vegetation was beautiful, as were the spectacular mountains towering around us, made more dramatic by the exposed white limestone cliffs peaking through the green.

While the others headed back to the same hostel that night, I stayed with Oliver at his house—a small wooden hut by the side of the river. He lives in a much smaller community than me, which has neither electricity nor running water. Needless to say, he's having a much different experience from me, as was driven home to me as we had a candle-lit dinner of eggs, beans, and corn tortillas, pretty much the only food available to buy locally.

We spent the next 2 days visiting a place called Semuc Champey. Tuesday we did a tour of the nearby caves, climbing,crawling, and sometimes swimming—all while trying to keep our candles lit (the guide was the only one to carry a headlamp just in case). The tour was fun but honestly a bit dangerous for my taste, since it involved things like climbing up rather rickety ladders and rappelling down a 10 foot waterfall with just a slippery rope into the dark. After coming out of the caves we got to jump off a 30 foot bridge into the river and tube 15 minutes down the river back to our hostel, where there was a sweet rope swing off the tree which we enjoyed playing around on.

Wednesday morning we visited Semuc Champey, a series of natural pools carved out of the limestone by the Cahobon river. The geology is very interesting, the pools refreshing and fun to explore, and the views are just spectacular. A great time was had by all!

We left on a bumpy dirt road standing in the back of a pickup truck with metal rails to hold on to, heading to Coban. In Lanquin, we switched into a crowded chicken-bus bound for Coban. There had been no cell reception for the previous 24 hours, and as I turned my phone back on while climbing into the bus and squeezing between 3 or 4 Guatemalans into a seat in the middle of the aisle, I saw with some surprise that I had 5 voice messages in my inbox.

The first was from my dad. He said to call him back immediately on his cellphone and that my Grandmother was very sick. He didn't give more details, but sounded very solemn. I realized with some alarm that I didn't remember his new cell number by memory and didn't have it saved on my Guatemalan cellphone. I tried calling his home but nobody picked up. I tried calling my mom and couldn't get through to her either. I frantically began calling all the numbers I remembered by heart but didn't get through to anyone. A few minutes later, I suddenly lost the cell signal again as we left town back into the mountains. I sat scrunched in my seat impatiently, looking almost constantly at the phone's screen to see if the bars signaling coverage had returned. Finally, after about half an hour, reception returned and I began trying to call again. After a few tries I was able to finally get through to my mom. I pushed the phone against my ear and stuck my finger in the other ear, trying to hear over the noise in the bus. The other passengers in the crowded bus glanced over their shoulders as I had a loud conversation in English, audible but I assume incomprehensible to everyone.

“Hi Mom,” I began. “Have you heard anything about Gramma being sick?” I asked quickly, not wanting to waste words for fear that my pre-paid cell phone credit would run out in the middle of the conversation.

There was a pause before my mom's response, which she said with some difficulty.

“Travis, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but your Gramma died earlier today”.

I paused a moment, unsure of what to do or say, as the crowded bus continued winding around the side of a mountain, before realizing that I still didn't have the luxury of wasting time since my phone credit could run out any second. My mom didn't have any more details of what had happened and I asked her to please try to get a hold of my dad and have him call me ASAP. I hung up and tried calling the Peace Corps office to let them know I'd be leaving the country soon. As I began explaining the situation in Spanish to the receptionist, my credit suddenly ran out and the call ended. Fortunately, right at that moment my dad called (incoming calls are free) and I was able to get more information. As I'd known, my Grandmother had fallen and broken her hip a few weeks ago, but my dad told me that within the last few days sudden complications had come up unexpectedly, and had quickly become critical. My grandmother had very clear directives against intubation, so rather than put her into an induced coma which she probably would never come out of, they had made her comfortable the previous day and she'd passed only a few hours earlier with my Dad holding her hand for the last hour. All this information was coming at me very suddenly, in an environment which was less than ideal to be dealing with it. I spent the next hour of the bus ride on the phone. Peace Corps was able to get a hold of me and I spoke with my boss. When I was talking with my dad about flight possibilities, the ayudante (the driver's 'helper') came around to collect the fare. We knew that the fare was supposed to be 15 quetzales (about $2 USD), but had had some trouble with them trying to overcharge us on the way there, so I just handed the teenage boy 15Q without saying anything, still on the phone with my dad. “Veinticinco (25) Quetzales”, he said to me in Spanish. “Quince (15)”, I responded firmly. It's fairly common for foreigners to be overcharged on Guatemalan public transportation, but I'd always found that on buses if you know the correct fare and are firm you can always get the correct price. Nonetheless, the ayudante wouldn't back down and insisted on charging me 25. I went back and forth between arguing with him in Spanish and trying to have a conversation with my dad in English, telling him to hold on every few seconds. My friend Tony, who was sitting behind me, got in on the argument too. The other passengers on the bus, who'd already been giving me looks since I'd been dominating the small compartment with my multiple phone calls in English, were now looking on with some interest at the gringos and ayudante getting increasingly irritated with each other. I asked the guy sitting next to me how much he had paid, and he confirmed the fare of 15 quetzales, but the ayudante refused to back down. In the end it came to him informing the driver that we refused to pay the higher fare, and them pulling the bus over, opening the door, and telling us to either pay or get out. Tony and I both agreed later that under normal circumstances we would have both fought harder and would have refused to be discriminated against, but given the circumstances—I still didn't know when the funeral was going to be, and wanted to get to the airport in Guatemala City as soon as I could—we swallowed our pride and paid the extra dollar and 25 cents. It was the first time in my life I truly felt discriminated against because of the color of my skin.

When we arrived in Coban, I said goodbye to my friends and rushed to try to catch a bus to Guatemala city. A friendly Guatemalan man who had overheard my conversation with the Peace Corps receptionist in Spanish, offered to help show me where the buses were, and his kindness helped me remember that while some people try to take advantage of others who are vulnerable—foreigners in this case— the vast majority of Guatemalans, and people in general for that matter, are honest and want to help each other out. We arrived at the bus station and were told there were no more buses until tomorrow morning, but the man called a friend of his who agreed to bring me to Guatemala City for 450 quetzales, about $55. I thanked my new friend and headed off. As we were leaving Coban I got a hold of my dad again, who told me the funeral was not going to be until Monday, 5 days later. Up until that point the only thing on my mind had been getting back to the U.S. as soon as possible at all costs. I'd felt guilty about having been on vacation having fun in the jungle while my grandmother had been dying, and hadn't really stopped to think things through. The ugly incident on the bus hadn't really helped me think any clearer. Now that I finally had a chance to calm down, I realized that it didn't make sense for me to rush to Guatemala City with no plan and nowhere to stay, alone and exhausted. I asked the driver to turn around and bring me back to Coban (I felt I was again overcharged for the short trip, but this time I just paid without complaining). My friends Tony and Adrian invited me to stay in the extra bed in their relatively fancy hotel room, and we had a nice dinner of wine and steak at the hotel restaurant which helped calm me down a lot.

I ended up flying out 2 days later. I decided to stay for the conference—I really wanted to see some of my friends who I hadn't caught up with in months—and flew on the morning of the 4th of July.

The time home was hard, but it was really great to spend some time with my family. My Gramma's house had a bad fire last fall and was in the process of being re-built, so the entire family gathered in the beautiful house she had been renting in the meanwhile. I went swimming in the pool with my cousin Zoe, congratulated my cousin Peter on his recent high school graduation an acceptance to Swarthmore, caught up with my cousin Emily who I hadn't seen since last October, heard more about Eric's time in China, and enjoyed the company of everyone in my family, who I hadn't been expecting to see anytime soon. True to Snow family form, there was plenty of yummy food and alcohol to be consumed, as well as fireworks for the 4th of July (although not nearly as cool as the ones here I have to say).

The funeral was sad, but a wonderful celebration of my Grandmother's life. I thought that Stephanie, my grandmother's caretaker for the last 7 years, gave the most memorable eulogy of all, telling in warm detail how much she had grown to love my Grandmother over the years. We cried as we brought the casket out of the temple to the waiting hearse. After the funeral my Dad, Eric, Selena and I went with the hearse to pass by her old house one last time, and we got out to say our goodbyes to the house we had so many memories of. We walked out past the lawn to the dock, then back to the house. From the outside it still looked pretty normal, with just a few boarded up windows. Eric wanted to go inside, however, and the story there was very different. The entire house was to be demolished and rebuilt, so the inside had been completed gutted, down to the very walls. All that was left was the skeleton of the structure, and you could literally see through the entire house from one end to the other. It was very sad, haunting even, to see 25 years of memories completely gone. It reminded me of the scene in Titanic where, going through the ships empty remains, there are flashbacks to how things were in the past. I remembered all the time I had spent at my Gramma's house over the years, and I realized how much I love her and will miss her.

The next day Eric and I went to visit my mom and Jerry, her new husband as of 2 weeks ago, at their new house—new for my mom, if not for Jerry. I gave them some small wedding gifts I'd picked up in Guatemala in a hurry before leaving, and we had a few meals together. As happy as I am for my mom's new life and as much as I enjoyed visiting her I couldn't help feel a bit sad there as well. The sale of our old house at River Run, the house I had grown up in, had closed just a week earlier. As much as Mom and Jerry went out of their way to make us comfortable, I knew this would never feel like home. Since we sold the lake house in Massachusetts 10 years ago, the 2 places I've really called home are my mom's house in New Hartford and my Gramma's house in Darien. It made me rather depressed to realize all at once that both of these places were now gone, that I really don't know where to call home anymore. At very least, I felt the trip home represented a great change, and marked a new chapter in my life.

The next day, the last of my whirlwind 4 days back in U.S., after doing some shopping with my mom, Jerry, and Eric (I ended up pretty much just impulse buying chocolate and cheese products to bring back with me), Eric and I headed to my Dad's house, where we had a great dinner in Hoboken. We ate outside, and I enjoyed the lingering dusk of summer one last time (here near the equator sunsets are much shorter, and summer days aren't nearly as drawn out) The following morning Eric and my dad drove me to La Guardia airport and I flew back to Guatemala.

It feels strange being back so abruptly, and I was feeling a bit down most of the day today (I've already gone through quite a bit of the chocolate I brought back). In addition to the grief we were all going through when I was home, I couldn't help but have the feeling that life is passing me by, a feeling which has recurred on and off over the past few years during difficult times. Seeing all my family going about their lives, I asked myself very seriously what I was doing in Guatemala, and realized more than ever the sacrifices I'm making by being here.

Nonetheless, I've found inspiration by thinking back to how proud my Grandmother was of me and what I'm trying to do here. Walking around town the last 2 days since I've been back, it's been great to hear kids shout my name excitedly, and have people ask where I've been the last few weeks (in other words, they noticed my absence).

The other exciting news is that I'm going to have a new site mate named Courtney. I found out the day before I flew back to the U.S. and didn't have a chance to meet her before I left. She was coming to do her site visit while I was gone though, so I offered for her to stay in my room and gave her my landlord's number. When I arrived home yesterday I was pleased to see she had made it here safely and spent the afternoon getting to know her. We get along really well so far, and I think she'll end up being an important part of my life for the next 2 years here. She left this morning to finish her last week of training and swear in, but will be back for good in 10 days, so we'll have plenty of time to get to know each other better.

Between swine flu, my trip to Coban, the PC conference, and my sudden trip home, it's now been over 4 weeks since I've set foot in any of my schools. I'm hoping I can spend the coming weeks and months getting back into the swing of things here and accomplish my goals for the schools before classes end in October.

2009-06-25T17:31:00.000-07:00

June 14

I had a very adventurous weekend. Friday was my friend Amanda's birthday, and I was excited to go to the party she was hosting at her house. The only problem was getting there. Amanda lives in the same department as me as well the majority of the volunteers from my training class (for security reasons I can't give the specific names) but, frustratingly, there is no bus service between my site and the rest of the department. Instead, I need to take a long, indirect circle through 2 other departments in order to visit my friends. So what's probably only a 30 mile trip as the crow flies ends up taking about 4 hours, 4 separate buses, and over half of my daily living allowance in bus fare. Instead of doing this trip as I've done in previous visits, I had the idea to ride my bicycle to the party. The mountain bike, with a sturdy frame, shock absorbers, thick tires, 27 speeds (all of which even work), and most importantly (as I would later discover), well functioning brakes, was certainly up for the job. I talked with a few people about the idea and got different recommendations. Some thought it was a great idea, while others warned me that I could get robbed, or lost, or hurt in an accident. Looking at the map and topography on google Earth, I realized that there were several opportunities to take wrong turns and end up in the middle of nowhere, but my days biking across the U.S. in college taught me that you can always find your way by asking directions.

So Friday morning just before 7a.m. (I wanted to get an early start to beat the sun) I set out down the dirt road towards my destination. The trip, as I knew beforehand, had lots of steep ups and downs. The uphills were challenging, and I was soon sweating in the cool early morning air. More difficult, however, were the descents. The steep pitch combined with dirt and sand over a hard rock face made skidding very difficult to avoid, and I had to constantly apply the brakes with care to avoid losing control. There were enormous potholes and mini-canyons everywhere, products of the erosion brought by the rains which began early last month. And to top it all off, the roads which wound precariously along the sides of the mountain, often bordered large cliffs descending into valleys or rivers far below. I had told me friends that if they didn't hear from me by noon to call the Peace Corps to come look for me, and I hoped I wouldn't end up flying out of control into the valley.

In the end the trip was exciting, challenging, beautiful, and a lot of fun. As I went up and down mountain after mountain, passing isolated houses with people working laboriously in their fields, the views of the surrounding landscapes and distant mountains were spectacular. Pine forests aren't normally what people think of when the imagine Central America, but they are all over the Guatemalan highlands, mixing with the occasional palm and orange trees, more classical images of a tropical climate.

After about an hour and a half on the road, I entered a village where kids were lining the main road on their way to school. The site of a gringo in funny clothes biking through apparently wasn't something they witnessed every day, and a few of the kids started running along side me. More and more kids began to join me until I quickly had several dozen pairs of little feet trying to keep up. I passed by some people walking in the other direction, who observed the scene with a mixture of surprise and amusement. As I got to the far end of town, I bade goodbye to the few out of breath kids who had managed to stick with me.

While I was a bit tired for the party, it was a lot of fun to catch up and hang out with my fellow Peace Corps friends. We sat out on Amanda's terrace and enjoyed the wonderful food and drinks she had prepared. I had brought some homemade bagels and a few other small gifts in my backpack, which Amanda enjoyed greatly. We heard there was some sort of party going on at the bus terminal, and headed over to check it out. When we arrived, a d.j. with huge speakers set up on the back of his pickup truck was blasting dance music. Unfortunately my energy was pretty much drained by that point, but it was still a lot of fun. After dancing for a while, we all headed back to Amanda's and went to sleep. The next morning most of us hung at Amanda's for the morning, relaxing and eating, and a few of us went into Xela (Guatemala's second largest city, about an hour bus ride) to see a movie and eat dinner in the mall food court.

The next morning I had a slightly more lazy start and finally got on the road about 9. I was a lot more relaxed since I already knew the route, and I was pleasantly surprised that there was a lot more downhill than ups on the return route. I would have probably done the whole trip in about 2 hours if I hadn't gotten confused and made a wrong turn at the very last fork before arriving home. After sweating up a particularly long and steep climb out of a river valley, I realized I didn't recognize the scenery. I asked some people standing outside their house if I was still on track, and was told that I had made a wrong turn. Frustrated, hot and tired, and almost out of water, I turned back, descended back all the way down to the river, and took the correct fork back up the other side of the valley. I arrived home and got a cold drink from the store next door, satisfied with my weekend adventure.

This week has been very tranquilo. Unfortunately, all public schools in Guatemala have been suspended for the next 2 weeks due to the threat of swine flu. As disappointing as it is that education is being watered down, it also leaves me with the dilemma of what to do with all the new free time. I was a bit worried at first, but have so far been enjoying the time to read, watch some DVDs on my laptop, and meet new people in my town. I taught my 4 host siblings how to play UNO, and they immediatly fell in love with it. Now, whenever they see me in the hallway the ask when we can play.

Yesterday morning I met up with Roberto bright and early at 6 a.m. to go running, and ended up doing the most challenging run of my life, and hour and 40 minutes. We ran to the top of a nearby mountain, about a 15 minute climb. When we got to the top, instead of turning around like we normally do, we decided to keep going down the other side. We ended up going another 15 minutes downhill, which of course we had to backtrack back up to get home. When I finally arrived at my door, my entire body ached, but especially my back, knees, and feet. I spent the rest of the day resting up, but it felt great to see how much my hard work training these last 5 months has paid off. I was still a bit sore this morning, but I still went on an easier 40 minute run over pretty flat terrain, which felt like just a warm-up by comparison. The half marathon in Coban is in less than 2 weeks, and I'm feeling pretty good about it.

This morning I had the time to spend a few hours in the market. Since the town is so small, Wednesdays are the only market day of the week, when the sleepy, laid back town becomes a crowded, bustling center of commerce, with people coming from various parts of the country to sell their goods out of the back of their pickup trucks, or in crowded make-shift stalls lining the streets. Everything from fresh produce, DVDs and CDs, to haircuts in the park are available. I normally work in the schools on Wednesdays, so I usually content myself with a rushed 15 minute run through to pick up my weekly vegetables and other basic items, before hopping on my bike to go to work. But today I was able to take my time, browsing and greeting people at a leisurely pace. I was happy to note that I am recognizing more and more faces in town, especially kids who I work with from the surrounding communities who come in with their parents. I normally ask them why they're not in school, but today was happy to just greet them and ask how they're enjoying their 'vacation'. It's always a nice feeling to hear 'Travis' shouted from across the market, even if 9 times out of 10 I don't remember the name of the kid shouting it.

I still continue struggling to appreciate the positive aspects of life here and remain optimistic despite the challenges—feelings of loneliness, isolation, boredom, and doubts as to whether I'll actually be able to accomplish anything here. Talking with my friends last weekend, hearing about how busy some of them were, going to meetings and doing projects with their schools, made me a bit self-conscious about my relative lack of business. I had to remind myself that I was the only one there in a new site (as opposed to replacing a previous volunteer), and as such would have to expect things to go slower. I don't mind the idea of Peace Corps life being difficult, but am terrified by the thought that it will end up not being worth the effort I have put in to be here. Despite the positive experiences I've had with people here, I'm still in a very different culture from my own, and have found making real friends harder than I'd imagined, much harder than my experience living in Argentina for half a year, where I easily made friends with the middle-class University students I found lots in common with. Here, during my low points, tossing and turning in bed at night trying to get to sleep, I sometimes ask myself what I am doing here, what I hope to accomplish. I think of my friends, enjoying their youth, spending time with friends and families, establishing careers; in short, building lives, while I am stuck here by myself for the next 2 years without even knowing what I'll have to show for my efforts.

Nonetheless, looking back at the last almost 3 months I have spent here, I have to believe I have accomplished something. The smile and greeting from kids when they see me in town has to mean something. I've been beating kids over the head with hand-washing for the last 6 weeks (not literally of course)--stories, games, songs, and other interactive activities, and moved on last week to teeth brushing. While I still see kids with grimy hands, it does seem like habits are beginning to change in both kids and teachers.

I have started opening my door and sitting out on my front stoop more often. The flow of people walking by is pretty interesting, and gives me the opportunity to show my face more, which is what I really need to do to fit in more. I continue having periods of ups and downs, but now, on this rainy Wednesday afternoon in late June, I'm having a nice day.

June 25th

School continues to be canceled because of the H1N1 virus, and I've actually been enjoying the time off more than I'd expected. Last week was the 'feria', the festival held by all towns and cities and Guatemala once per year, in one of the nearby 'cantones', or small villages. I enjoyed watching the celebration and meeting new people from the area. The first afternoon, a school marching band from a nearby city was bussed in—the site of adolescents, dressed in stupid uniforms, marching in formation while blowing out of tune songs at the top of their lungs brought back painful memories of my own days in marching band. I enjoyed watching them march until someone brought me to the front of the band and put a lit torch in my hand. Gaspar, an older man who was the other torch bearer, became my new friend and guide, telling me where to go when we arrived at the celebration. I didn't know exactly what the torch was for until I saw what looked like a mini Eiffel tower covered with fireworks. I've learned that many Guatemalans are pretty much pyromaniacs when it comes to fireworks, and the Feria was no exception. The torch, I realized, was to light the enormous array. I normally try to keep clear of fireworks, which are of dubious quality, but couldn't back out of my duty. After a speech by my landlord Juan Fermin, Gaspar and I lit the fuse and quickly backed away with plenty of time to find a safe place to watch the show, which was quite loud and impressive. There were several other pyrotechnic events that followed, the most interesting of which was the 'Torro', or 'Bull'--a man with a wooden bull costume on, running around a field while covered with fireworks going off the entire time. A second guy with a red cloth taunts the 'bull', avoiding not just the horns but also the rockets shooting off unpredictably. Soon, however, other spectators got in on what soon became a Guatemalan version of the running of the bull. Of course a bunch of kids, parents nowhere to be seen, were running around the field, chasing the bull. The bull would also run past the crowd, startling people who weren't paying attention with various lit objects flying past their heads. At one point the bull got near the stage and a rocket shot up to it, bouncing off the back wall, still lit, right into a group of people. Nobody was hurt, and I just shook my head and laughed with a mixture of concern and amusement at the ridiculousness of the situation. The following days activities included people climbing a large tree trunk, stripped like a telephone pole and anchored to the ground, and jumping from the top tied with ropes and dancing their way to the ground. In the afternoon a marimba band (a wooden xylophone, Guatemala's national instrument) played for several hours, while women in masks danced along in unison and a few drunks staggered around alongside. The whole weekend was a memorable experience, but the best part was definitely mingling with the community, greeting friends and making several new ones.

Last weekend I met up with fellow PCV Katie and traveled to Nebaj, a beautiful large town/small city high in the mountainous highlands, the highest mountain chain in Central America. We planned to do a hike, without having made any specific plans. After getting a bit of information from a trekking agency, we headed out on a 2 day, 20+ mile stroll. Since we both speak fluent Spanish and didn't have the money to hire a guide, we decided to do the hike solo. We soon discovered that Ixil, the local Mayan language, dominated the area and people spoke only limited Spanish, but we were able to get by without too many problems. The mountains were taller and steeper than I imagined, but the trek was well worth it. The only minor problem we had was when, at the top of a high mountain in the late afternoon, a cloud rolled over us, reducing visibility to under a hundred feet and bringing a steady cold rain. To complicate matters further, we suddenly came to a fork in the road, with no indication of which way lead to our destination and nobody to ask. We had no other option but to pick a fork and start walking, until we came across two men walking the other way who informed us we were going the wrong way. We thanked them, walked back to the fork and went the correct way, losing about half an hour in the process.

Tourism is only marginally developed in the area, and the remote villages we passed through were definitely the poorest I've seen yet in Guatemala. We passed by many wooden, often single room houses with dirt floors and smoke from open cooking fires wafting from the ceiling (respiratory illnesses caused by smoke inhalation are one of the leading causes of child mortality in the country, and not cooking over open fires is one of the issues I address in my work here). Most of the area seemed to at least have electricity, but a few of the villages didn't have access to roads. We spent the night in a small dormitory built by the community for passing trekkers. We were the only foreigners we saw the whole 2 days, and it seemed like the dorms weren't used that frequently. We ate our meals in the homes of local families, which provided me the opportunity to experience the living conditions of rural Guatemalan families in a way that I realized until now I hadn't yet had a chance to see first hand.

My mom got married last Tuesday night back in Connecticut. I was sorry not to be able to attend in persson, but was able to watch the ceremony live via an internet broadcast. It was great to see how happy my mom and her new husband Jerry were. CONGRATULATIONS MOM AND JERRY!!!

The rest of the week I've been hanging out in town, not doing too much. I was able to spend more time walking around and mingling on market day, and always enjoy greeting the kids I work with, especially when they're not playing hooky in the process.

I've been in site almost 3 whole months, and arrived in Guatemala almost 6 months ago! I'm finally starting to feel more integrated into my community and feel like I am making more real friends, as opposed to friendly acquaintances. I'm headed out tomorrow to visit my host family in Xenacoj, en route to Coban for the half-marathon. I've been training for over 5 months and can't wait to see how I do! I'm also excited to meet up with several friends and spend a few days exploring the area before going to a Peace Corps conference later in the week, leading up to the 4^th of July bash next weekend.

2009-06-03T16:18:00.000-07:00

A few pictures from the cross-dressing welcome party for the new volunteers at Lake Atitlan last weekend. No words needed :)

2009-06-03T16:10:00.000-07:00

MOSCAS EN LA CASA

I've had kind of a tough past few days. The other morning I went running with Roberto, the teacher at one of my schools who I've gone running with a few times. The problem was that Roberto had to be at work early and could only go out at the ludicrous hour of...5 AM! I knew I should have just said thanks but lets do it another time, but sure enough I found myself running in the nearly pitch black, trying to keep up with Roberto, when what else but a fine mist of cold rain should start coming down. Well, long story short the next day I felt myself starting to get sick, and spent the next 2 days at home with a fever, aches, and stuffy nose. Sitting cooped up in my house feeling like crap wasn't the best thing for my outlook on life, and I had lots of time to mull over things and get myself worked up. What's worse, to my horror I realized I was getting a fly problem...more and more flies had begun invading my room. Apparently, now that rainy season has started, insects have begun invading everywhere. In addition to flies I've also noticed huge beetles crawling (and sometimes flying) around my room. But the flies are the worst. It started getting really annoying when they started landing on my face and waking me up in the morning.

Today I was finally feeling a bit better, and had decided to change things up by inviting Susy and Tony, 2 of my Peace Corps neighbors from (relatively) nearby towns, to brunch. I spent yesterday afternoon making homemade bagels—both sesame and cinnamon raisin—in my Peace Corps oven (it's really cool—a large lidded pot with a water-filled tuna can placed at the bottom and then put on a stovetop—the water in the can boils and the water vapor creates heat!!!) and this morning I baked a large loaf of banana bread—I was very proud! The only problem was that despite my efforts to get the flies to leave, the problem only seemed to be getting worse with more and more flies covering my walls. As hard as I tried, I could not squash even one. I had no idea what to do and was worried of what my friends would think when they arrived.

We had a really great time, and Tony and Susy stayed most of the afternoon. In addition to the bagels and bread, I made hashbrowns and french toast, and was highly complimented on my culinary creativity. The highlight of the afternoon was when the rain started coming down so hard that it created a virtual river outside my front door. Tony and Susy pointed out all the positive aspects of my house—how much natural light I get; how convenient and nice the view is of the wide front entrance; my nice private bathroom; the charming patio out back; and my host family with 4 cute kids. While I'd been becoming critical of my living situation, they're comments made me realize the good things and changed my attitude quite a bit.

The only problem were the flies. The black mass of bodies on my ceiling seemed to keep growing larger and larger, and I was embarrassed when they buzzed by my friends heads. I asked if they had any ideas. Tony recommended “MataMoscas” (literally, “KillsFlies”), basically a strip of really sticky tape which traps the flies when they land on it.

After I walked Susy and Tony back to the bus stop in the center of town, I stopped in a few stores until I found one that had MataMoscas in stock. I bought 4 strips to be sure I had enough for all the little buggers.

Back at my house, I found that the product (which was for some strange reason labeled entirely in German) was not as self explanatory as I'd expected. I asked Juan Fermin, my landlord/host dad to help out, and with his assistance as well as the moral support of the 4 kids who stood and watched, we hung the sticky strips from my ceiling. I didn't feel like waiting around, so I grabbed a broom and started sweeping the flies on the ceiling in the direction of the strips. Sure enough, a fly landed on it, its legs stuck fast and hard. Then another did the same. Then another. As I swung my broom gleefully around the room (anyone looking through the window would probably have thought I was possessed), more and more flies sealed their fate by landing on the strips of death. I could even hear their futile buzzing as they tried in vain to free themselves. I laughed with sadistic pleasure at the little creatures who had until recently seemed to take so much pleasure in tormenting me. Within a few hours nearly all of the flies and the room were stuck, dead or dying.

As an added bonus, Juan's help in hanging the MataMoscas revealed a solution to another problem I've been trying to solve for weeks, that of hanging pictures and posters on my wall. The problem is that however much I try to tape them, they always fall down off the slippery walls. The problem was really starting to irritate me (in the Peace Corps, little things can make you really happy or really piss you off). However, in showing my how to hang the MataMoscas Juan showed me a new technique of taping a large piece to the wall to create a base, and then using a second piece to attach what you want to hang. After I had my fill of sweeping flies to their death, I spent the next hour taping up a bunch of pictures, posters, and maps I've been dying to get up. As I write this, Juan is finally putting up the curtains to block the light on my windows which he's been promising to do for weeks. All my problems are solved!

2009-05-12T12:06:00.000-07:00

The other day Juana, my K'iche teacher arrived at my house and told me there was a group of American doctors in town. “Are you sure they're American?”, I asked her. “Yes, they're still here”, she replied, pointing to the bus parked in front of the elementary school, which is right across the street. I went to investigate and, sure enough, they were a group of mainly doctors and dentists on a missionary medical trip from the states. I was a bit shocked to see other gringos in “my” town and, after getting over my disbelief, introduced myself to the bus load of friendly white faces. I arranged to meet up with them the next day and help translate while they met patients at the school. It ended up being a very interesting and invaluable experience. As it turns out, most of the adult patients didn't speak much Spanish, so we ended up needing 2 translators—me to translate with the doctor between English and Spanish, and one of the school teachers to translate from Spanish to K'iche for the patient. Often times the patient was elderly and could barely speak at all, and so was accompanied by a daughter or son who would do most of the talking and communication, adding yet another link in our chain. The system was imperfect, and no doubt information was lost in the real-life game of telephone, but it worked well enough to communicate the basic information to the doctor. It was very sad to hear some of the stories—people that lived with chronic pain every day of their lives, or had health problems that would be fairly routine and treatable in the U.S., but for which little could be done in the context of rural Guatemala, where modern resources are often not available. We heard from abused mothers, who often started having children when they were still girls themselves and were now overburdened with kids to feed, who complained of perpetual stress and anxiety. While some of the people with serious treatable conditions were able to be referred to free or low cost surgery at a charitable hospital in Antigua, most of the time we were only able to offer band-aid solutions—things like tylenol or ibuprofen for pain, benadryl (an allergy medicine which causes drowsiness as a side effect) for any sort of sleep or anxiety problem, and vitamins to pretty much everyone.

The roller coaster ride continues on a daily basis. I'm still enjoying cooking for myself in my new room (I learned how to make bagels and vegetable curry—both are yummy and not too hard) and teaching health lessons at my schools. I'm feeling more of a 'routine', and often times the days seem to pass by and I don't know where the time has gone (for example I just spent 3 hours washing all my clothes by hand, taking up my entire morning). Unfortunately I found out last week that the Coban half marathon, which was supposed to be this Sunday, was postponed until late June due to the arrival of swine flu in Guatemala. I'm disappointed but suppose it's not so bad—I was a bit sick with a sore throat all last week so didn't get to go running, so I guess this way I'll have time to get in better shape (although I've started to have a bit harder time staying motivated than I had the first few months of training)

I got a second-hand mechanical orange juicer from Susy the other day, so yesterday I went with Roberto, a 25 year old teacher that works at one of my schools and also lives in town, to get some oranges from his family's farm just out of town. As we walked across the fields, which they are now digging up in preparation to plant corn, I noticed how the landscape is changing rapidly. A few weeks ago everything was dusty and dry, yet now the land is becoming wet and green. I've been told rainy season is supposed to be quite beautiful and am looking forward to it, even though I got caught riding home on my bike through the rain the other day and arrived cold and wet, an experience I'll probably have to get used to. Since starting almost 2 weeks ago it's rained every day in the afternoon. Mornings are still sunny and pleasant, but the clouds inevitably roll in at some point. It's still a novelty and I continue to enjoy the sound of hard rain on the roof (when I'm safely inside staying dry, that is). I took advantage of the morning off to wash my clothes while there was still sun, and I'm hoping that they'll be all dry before the rains come later this afternoon. I hear clothes drying can become a major problem during rainy season.

2009-05-12T12:04:00.001-07:00

It's been raining more frequently the last week or so, but we didn't get a real downpour until this afternoon. I think this is the official start of the rainy season. As a result, the power went out, which is apparently something I'll have to get used to, and I'm now sitting in candlelight, listening to the patter of rain outside while watching the last bit of light fade from the sky through my window.

The sky was bright blue this morning when I woke up, so I decided to take advantage of the nice weather and went for a training run. The Coban half marathon is less than 2 weeks away, so I decided to do a long, 90 minute training run with some hills. I felt really strong and enjoyed getting my blood pumping in the early morning air, greeting people walking into town and trying as always to avoid the dogs, or “chuchos” as they're called here. The run gave me a lot of confidence because I haven't been running as much as I should these last few weeks.

After a delicious breakfast of granola with yogurt, raisins, bananas and honey, I got on my new bike and headed to work at the elementary school in Oxlajuj, the nearest of the 3 communities I work in. My Peace Corps friend Susy gave me her bike last week--a really great mountain bike in good condition-- and it's really changed my life by cutting my commute more than in half. At the school I visited the 4 classrooms and did a short health lesson with each group. The lesson was designed to teach kids how to properly wash their hands, and consisted of going over a poster (made by yours truly) outlining the steps of washing hands, then practicing it in the classroom and then outside with real water. We also learned a song about washing your hands. It wasn't the most exciting lesson but I tried to make it as interactive as I could, and the kids seemed to be into it for the most part, and I seem to be gaining a lot of “confianza”, or rapport, with both the kids and the teachers. Whenever I walk into the classroom all the kids shout “TRAVES!!! TRAVES!!!” It's a nice feeling but sometimes I feel guilty to be a distraction. Last week I had meetings with all my 3 schools to introduce the Healthy Schools project and explain a bit about the goals we'll be trying to work towards as well as the methods we'll be using to achieve those goals. I put together a power point presentation of the program which I was very proud of, and I think all the meetings went very well. Today I was thrilled to see that, after only mentioning the goal of having clean drinking water in the school during my presentation, one of the teachers had already taken the initiative to bring a water dispenser into his class and had water boiled on the school stove for his class to drink!

I moved into a new house last week and so far it's been working out very well. The family is very nice and have 4 young children, 3 girls and 1 boy. I haven't spent a whole lot of time with them yet since they've been very busy building a new store/bookstore in the front of the house. The room I moved into was the old bookstore, and they also had a little general store next door, but they decided to combine their 2 stores into one bigger one, which they're putting the finishing touches on as I write. When I have the window open people sometimes peek in to look at me—makes me feel like a goldfish—or to ask about making photocopies. Apparently the old book store had one of the town's few public copy machines, so I politely explain that it's no longer available (although it's starting to get annoying). The room is nice because it has the benefits of living with a host family, but I also have my privacy. I have my own entrance to the street and my own half bathroom, which has been a very nice luxury. I decorated by hanging pictures of my family and from various trips I've taken, and have spent a lot of time and effort making my new environment more like home.

Nonetheless, what has brought me the most joy this last week has been the ability to finally cook for myself, something I haven't been able to do for almost 4 months. After riding home this afternoon at around 1pm, I cooked a lunch of grilled turkey and cheese sandwich with instant mashed potatoes. In addition to the obvious benefit of getting to eat the foods I like (although I'm probably not eating quite as healthy as I have been), I've also found cooking a great, relaxing way to pass the time and keep myself busy. I've bought and electric stove top, and have my entire “kitchen” concentrated on the table propped up against my back wall. I stocked up at the supermarket on things like spices, turkey meat, yogurt, and of course CHEESE, and can get amazing fruit and produce here in town on Wednesdays which is market day. The other day I made homemade guacamole, which was delicious and very cheap since avocados are about 10 cents each!

Today, however, I attempted a new cooking method that all the other Peace Corps volunteers rave about—the “Peace Corps Oven”. The idea is to use your stove as an oven by taking a big, tightly covered metal pot with an empty tuna can filled with water inside of it, and using the evaporated water vapor to cook food like an oven. I have to admit I was a bit skeptical of the idea at first, but finally acquired all the necessary elements of the oven yesterday, and today I spent almost my entire afternoon making banana bread. I mixed the sugar, margarine, eggs, flour, baking soda, baking powder, and finally the mashed bananas (the girl in the store this morning looked at me kind of funny when I gladly bought the black mushy bananas-- only 1 Quetzal for all 6, or about 2 cents each!) I poured the mixture into the baking pans, and lowered them into the preheated “oven” on top of my stove. Soon the aroma of fresh banana bread wafted out into my room, and 45 minutes later I removed 2 fresh loaves of yummy banana bread! Eating my new creation, I realized I still had 3 bananas left, so decided to spend the rest of my afternoon making a second batch.

Another luxury I have recently acquired has been internet in my house, courtesy of a USB modem which connects through the cell phone network. It's a relatively slow connection and I have a very limited amount of bandwith (only 1 GB of information transfer per month), but it's really great to be able to read the news every day in my own home, and WONDERFUL to download podcasts from BBC and NPR to listen to while cooking or cleaning.

Speaking of which, I spend a lot of time cleaning these days—between washing dishes, washing my clothes, and just keeping my things in order, I'm becoming a regular domestic. Not that I really can say that I mind. Washing dishes while listening to my music in my room is actually rather enjoyable, and I'm getting used to a slower pace of life.

As my second batch of banana bread was just finishing up, my new Q'uiche teacher, Juana, arrived at my door. I've been studying the Q'uiche mayan language for several weeks now, and am actually starting to make some headway. The first few classes were pretty tedious—just learning how to pronounce the sounds, several of which are completely foreign and very difficult for a non-native speaker to make. The hardest letter is the “ q' ”, which is pronounced by pushing just a touch of air from the very back of the throat. I'm also starting to build a small vocabulary, but the most fascinating thing for me has been learning about the grammar. It's really interesting to me to learn how the words connect and relate to each other to form ideas and communication, how vastly different languages find different, but also very parallel, solutions to similar problems of how to transmit information. For example, today I learned the formula for conjugating verbs in Q'uiche. The conjugation consists of a fairly straightforward formula of adding a different pre-fix depending on which person the verb is referring to. To change a verb between the past, present, and future, there are different prefixes, but mercifully they are all fairly similar to each other. The basic idea of modifying the verb root depending on the person and time being referred to is similar to Spanish, but the entire system is infinitely simpler. In Spanish there are multiple pasts, presents, and futures, all with totally different conjugations. After learning all the various rules and formulas, one must learn all the arbitrary exceptions and irregular verbs, stem changes and a seemingly endless plethora of other rules—it normally takes 2 years to have a good working understanding of conjugating Spanish verbs in all their various tenses, and even now I find new verbs with strange conjugations. In contrast, I learned the entire system in Q'uiche in about 10 minutes, and it all fit into 1 page of notebook paper. I'm sure I'll discover more subtleties, and have no doubt there will be difficult grammatical points which I can't even foresee, but I was amazed to see the simple yet effective way of conjugating verbs in Q'uiche. OK, I better stop writing about this before I look like too much of a geek, if that's still possible.

Overall, my life still has a lot of day to day ups and downs. As much as I'm striving to stay busy, there are still plenty of down times, which are inevitably harder. Those are the times when things start to rattle around in my head, when I start to think about the fact that I'll be here for 2 whole years, 2 WHOLE YEARS! I've already been here over a month, which in hindsight seems to have passed pretty quickly, but that still seems insignificant in comparison to the big picture. The 2 worst feelings to have are boredom and loneliness. People here are very friendly and curious for the most part, but being “friendly” with someone is different from having friends. I feel like I've had the same conversation 100 times about where I'm from, what I'm doing here, yes I'll really be here for 2 years, and I'm neither catholic nor evangelical (pretty much the only 2 religions that exist in Guatemala, plus the occasional Mormon or Mennonite missionaries here and there). I've started becoming friends with some of the teachers at my schools, but the problem is that most of them commute here from Quiche or other larger population centers, so they go home after work which prevents me from hanging out with them out of school. One exception has been Roberto, a teacher at Oxlajuj who lives in town. He invited me to play soccer with him once, and we went running together the other morning. He's a really nice guy and is also very smart and hardworking—like many teachers, in addition to working full time he studies in the university on weekends, which also means he's very busy and doesn't have a whole lot of free time. Nonetheless, I can definitely see myself becoming good friends with him as well as a few of the other teachers at my schools. It's kind of a paradox how traveling and doing things like Peace Corps makes me feel so lonely but also so closely connected to others at the same time.

Another strategy I've found helpful in helping me keep my sanity is having things to look forward to. I'm really looking forward to running the Coban half marathon in 2 weeks. I've also taken 2 weekend trips to meet up with other volunteers in Xela, a beautiful, bustling colonial city 3 or 4 hours from here. I also went to visit my friend Erin at her site on beautiful lake Atitlan, which was a lot of fun. I've also met up a handful of times for a drink or lunch with Susy and Tony, my 2 Peace Corps “neighbors” in the area.

The electricity has returned, and it's almost 9PM, which has almost become my de facto bedtime these days, so I guess I'll sign off for now.

2009-04-04T12:30:00.000-07:00

Many times during our training we heard the Peace Corps experience compared to a 2 year roller coaster ride, with lots of ups and downs. That analogy certainly seems an accurate description of the last week.

Last weekend, swearing in as official volunteers, was the high point, the culmination of our last 3 months of training. Friday morning bright and early, dressed in our best clothes (in my case much of which was borrowed from my host father Carlos) we all piled into Peace Corps vans en route to the U.S. Ambassador's house in Guatemala City. The house and surrounding lawn and garden were all immaculately maintained, leading to the inevitable remarks about where our tax dollars go. Our host families were all invited as well, and I took a few pictures with Chica, Lupita, Jaime, and the rest of the Xenacoj crew. The ceremony, mixed between English and Spanish with more of the latter, was quite poignant, with speeches by our training director, country director, a representative of the Guatemalan government, the U.S. Ambassador, as well as one of our fellow PC trainees, Jaime. We also got individually recognized in front of everyone with Peace Corps certificates and pictures shaking hands with the ambassador. After the speeches was our swearing in, which consisted of raising our hands and saying the oath in unison, which was virtually identical to the vice-presidential oath Joe Biden took in January. We mingled with our families and other newly sworn in volunteers for the better part of an hour while munching on yummy brownies and finger sandwiches. It really meant a lot to me that after so many years of working towards the goal of becoming a Peace Corps volunteer, this dream was finally a reality!

After a final farewell lunch with my wonderful host family, I finished packing up my bags, swapped my slacks, tie and loafers for my one pair of shorts, Hawaiian shirt, and sandals, and hopped on the bus to Antigua (actually, to be correct, it was 3 different buses, but who's counting?)

We spent the weekend having a truly wonderful time in Antigua. We ate out every meal, our last chance to enjoy comfort food, and Friday night I had some of the best Indian food (spicy butter chicken) I've had in a long time. We stayed in a relaxed hostel with a beautiful rooftop terrace and, best of all, free wi-fi! I spent numerous hours online calling my friends and family with skype, watching youtube videos, reading news, and of course updating my very out of date anti-virus definitions (as expected, I discovered I had several new viruses from using my flash drive at the internet cafes here).

Our first night, after some drinks at the Red Tree and then Mono Loco, we went dancing at a club. I'm definitely not much of a dancer but really had a lot of fun. We stayed out until the club closed at 1a.m., by far the latest I've stayed up in Guate so far!

The next day I lounged around in the hostel, went out a few times to eat, sent a few postcards, etc, and not much else. It was very nice. There was a reggae concert at the Red Tree that lots of people went to, but I was still tired from the night before so I only stayed for about an hour.

On Sunday morning, after a final farewell breakfast of all-you-can eat pancakes, we parted ways and headed to our sites. Just getting out of Antigua proved to be a challenge in and of itself, as the festivities for “Semana Santa”, the holy week leading up to Easter, had already begun to fill up the streets, completely screwing up the normal bus routes. Nonetheless, we made it in the end, and after a 3 hour or so bus ride, I arrived in site.

This moment had been in my mind the whole weekend, and it didn't take long for the shock of my new reality to sink in. After all the ceremony and celebration, this was it. I was an official Peace Corps volunteer, and this was my home for the next 2 years. Then again, I didn't actually have a home yet, so finding a place to sleep was my first task. Lucia, the teacher who has been a tremendous help to me, met my bus in the center of town. She had looked around for different housing options, but reported that a group of nurses were currently in town (she didn't know how long they'd be staying for), so there weren't many places available at the moment. We walked around and looked at the three different options she had found, but none of them seemed really great, and the thought of spending 2 years in any of them was frankly depressing. Only 1 actually had a bed already, but was a dark room with only a tiny window and no hot water. I decided to go back to the room I'd stayed in during my site visit. It's not a bad room, but the problem is that there's a corn tortilla grinder about 20 feet from my bed—it sounds like a machine gun and they turn it on and off every 5 or 10 minutes or so throughout the entire day starting around 5 am (or 3am on Wednesday, market day, as I discovered a few days later).

The first few days were really hard. I was still exhausted from the weekend and didn't sleep much at all my first night, which only made me feel more emotional and stressed about things. The thought that kept on running through my mind was “OH SHIT! WHAT HAVE YOU GOTTEN YOURSELF INTO??? I waited 4 years and worked my ass off to spend the next 2 years of my life here?!?” The thought of staying here for 2 whole years just seemed unfathomable. Not just any 2 years, mind you. These 2 years are the very prime of my youth, the years where I have the experience and lack of responsibilities to do anything I want. I'm almost 26 and the years are ticking by, never to return. I'll be 27 when I get out, just around the corner from 30! And me, being the stubborn guy that I am, wasn't satisfied until I got myself put in this forgotten backwater, miles from civilization. More than anything, however, I felt sad and alone in this new place where I barely knew anyone.

A friend of mine who I met in Peru where she was a Peace Corps volunteer doing a very similar project to me, recently wrote me an e-mail with the advice to just focus on making it through every day in the beginning. She said to just focus on the small successes like learning 2 peoples' names. I had arrogantly assumed that with all my experience traveling alone, with all the time I spent waiting to join the Peace Corps, that I would be immune from the hardships, or at least that they would affect me a lot less. Nonetheless, I am now taking Erin's advice to heart and it has helped me a lot this week. I'm trying not to think too far ahead, and am instead focusing on making every day as good as it can be. I visited all 3 schools this week, and am starting to build a rapport with the kids as well as with my fellow teachers.

Wednesday was market day, and I enjoyed walking around from stall to stall, taking in new sites and smells (well, some of the smells were less than enjoyable—e.g. Thousands and thousands of tiny dried out fish). The highlight of the day, however, was when not once but several times I heard my name shouted out through the crowd, always by different children. They were from the schools in the villages I will be working in, and had come to town to help their parents buy and sell. I was delighted that they not only remembered my name, but also felt enough rapport with me to shout my name in greeting.

Every day has felt a little bit easier. I still have times when I feel lonely or scared about things, and I'm sure I'll have lots more tough times ahead, but overall things could be a lot worse, and I have to admite that they really are pretty good. I went to the Chuachioj school today, where I had a great discussion with Luis, one of my fellow teachers, and taught the kids to play capture the flag. They had a great time and all seem to be completely comfortable with me already, which I take as no small victory.

I've started back up my running routine to train for the Coban half marathon next month. I've lost about 20 pounds since arriving in Guatemala, and have also converted a lot of fat to muscle. In 3 months I've gone from being in the worst shape I've been in since my freshman year of college 7 years ago to the best shape I've been in since the last time I cycled across the U.S. I'm more pleased each time I look in a mirror and have a renewed confidence in my body.

I was initially concerned that I didn't see any flat places to run here, and would be forced to kill myself climbing up and down the area's numerous valleys. This afternoon I went for a run and was absolutely elated to find a new road that's exactly perfect. Most importantly it's fairly flat. It's rural, but not so isolated as to be dangerous. It's stunningly beautiful, ´real´ Guatemala in every sense of the word. Running along the dirt road, I passed by fields and houses made of mud bricks, as well as people walking by, most of whom returned my greeting warmly and with a smile. The sky is wide open, with jagged mountains to the south rising from the horizon in the distance. At the end of my hour run, on my way back to town I passed an incredible white colonial church at the top of a hill right as the sun was sinking in the horizon, illuminating the entire sky with a brilliant orange glow. I have no illusions that the next 2 years will be easy, but motivation like that make me think that I may make it after all.

2009-03-26T18:44:00.000-07:00

I tossed and turned the whole night, thinking about the description of the town my counterpart had given me: “A desert, fairly flat, without any mountains”. All the doubts that had been festering under the surface all came out at once. What if I didn't like it? What if I didn't make friends? What if my schools were bad or didn't want me there? I asked myself if, after all the talk, all the waiting, all the hype, all I had gone through to be here, was I really ready to commit the next 2 years of my life in this place. Thinking of all the other things I could be doing with the time, I couldn't honestly answer.

The bus ride the next morning helped ease my mind a bit. I had a great conversation with Lucia, one of the teachers that I'll be working with who had come out to accompany me to my new home. As the bus made its way around the windy, bumpy roads up into the Guatemalan highlands, we talked about things we had in common—books, music, etc, and told each other a bit about our lives. She's very inspiring. After teaching every morning, she rides 40 minutes to Quiche every afternoon to take university classes towards her degree in bilingual education. She's on a scholarship and is only 21 years old. It was really cool to see her dedication and inspiration to improve her own future as well as the future of her community. As busy as she is, she also offered to give me K'iche classes in the evenings. I can already see that we'll become friends.

Upon arrival in my community, I had a sigh of relief to discover that, in contrast to the flat desert I had imagined, my site had plenty of trees and rolling hills fading into 2 pretty impressive mountain ranges in the distance on either side. Like Colorado, the sky is wide open, and from the rooftop patio of the house I was staying in temporarily, I could see for probably over 50 miles. The town itself is fairly small and tranquil, but not tiny. It's in a pretty isolated corner of Guatemala, but only about half an hour from Quiche, a fairly major city. Wednesday is market day, when the quiet streets come to life and teem with people buying and selling everything from fresh produce to toothbrushes. It's not the most dramatically beautiful site in the world, but has a very simple, unassuming beauty. In short, it's really the kind of site I would have pictured when I first thought about joining the Peace Corps.

My first full day in town was spent meeting local officials. I met the police, the justice of the peace, the doctor and other people at the health center, and a few other local people I will want to have a relationship with over the next 2 years. They were all very welcoming, which made me feel comfortable. The mayor wasn't available to meet yet, but I'm planning to meet him next week when I go back to my site.

The second day I finally got to visit one of the 3 rural schools I will be working in. It was a wonderful visit! After all the countless visits I've made to different schools during training, it felt so good to finally be able to say this was MY school, MY students, the faces I'll be working with for the next 2 years. The small, 2 story school is located a few kilometers from town among corn fields and pine trees, with a beautiful view of the surrounding countryside. I arrived with the school director right as the morning assembly was beginning. After singing the Guatemalan national anthem, I was introduced to the school's 150 or so kids. They sang me a welcome song and a few classes did some dances they had prepared. I introduced myself over the microphone and loudspeakers they'd set up for the occasion, and taught everyone the “Healthy Schools” song, which they took to immediately. Then I went around to each classroom and talked to them individually. Going from classroom to classroom, I had a great time and felt really effective. It made me realize how much I've learned in the last few years, and gave me the feeling that all the training, all the skills and experiences I've acquired while waiting to enter the Peace Corps, as well as my own personality, had all crystallized in that one place. It was really a breakthrough to realize how far I'd come, how much I'd really accomplished.

I had another breakthrough the next day when I visited the second of the three schools I'll be working in. In contrast to the first school, this one was a lot smaller, quieter, and more rural, with less than 60 students. I could immediately see that it would require more work than the first, but was soon encouraged by the experience. After meeting the school's 2 teachers and some of the parents of the school committee, I had the chance to meet the kids. I was a bit worried because the first language of people here is K'iche, and I'd been told the kids here may not speak Spanish particularly well. Nonetheless, when entering the first classroom I was greeted by a strong “BUENOS DIAS! PASE ADELANTE!” “GOOD MORNING! COME IN!” I introduced myself to the kids and told them who I was and what I would be doing there with them, then had everyone stand up and introduce themselves. I wanted to get a sense of what the kids were like—if they were comfortable talking up or if they were really timid, as well as gaging how well they spoke Spanish. Despite a few quiet kids, I was happy with the results. Next I taught them a few of the Healthy Schools songs, which talk about basic hygiene issues such as hand washing and brushing your teeth. The kids really got into them, and understanding Spanish didn't seem to be a problem. After the songs I made a few balloon animals for the class.

As I was singing a song about brushing your teeth, which involved me jumping and dancing around the classroom, much to the kids' amusement and laughter, I turned around and noticed a group of about 15 women standing at the door, staring at me rather oddly. Then I remembered being told that the mother's of the kids were coming to meet me. After finishing up in the class and saying goodbye to the kids, I went out to the earthen school yard to introduce myself to them. I wasn't sure how much of my Spanish they understood, but the president of the school committee translated my words in K'iche, mixing in enough words in Spanish here and there that I could roughly follow what he was talking about. As I was standing in front of the women explaining my role as a Peace Corps volunteer, I saw from the way they looked and paid attention to me (even if they didn't understand everything) that these women really wanted the best future for their kids, and they were really counting on me. It was obvious that they respected me and thought I knew what I was talking about. This confidence was a bit unnerving, but then I had the realization, “Wait a minute, I really DO know what I'm talking about! I may not be a complete expert yet, but the things I'm talking about are the things I've been learning about the last 3 months.” Peace Corps keeps emphasizing that as volunteers, we are “development professionals”. Standing in front of those mothers, I really felt like a development professional for the first time in my life. It was a great feeling, and one that I hope to have a lot more in the next 2 years.

I stayed at the school the whole day, playing soccer and some other activities with the kids during recess. There was one little firecracker, probably all of 7 years old, that kept on getting the ball past me, over and over again—it was frustrating but I couldn't help but laugh. When I left I already felt a rapport with them, and they asked me when I'd be back. When I left town the next morning to head back for my last week of training at the Peace Corps center, I felt good, thinking that I could really see myself being happy here in my new home for the next 2 years.

This week I've been busy finishing things at the Peace Corps center and tying up all the loose ends. Tomorrow we have our swearing in ceremony with the U.S. Ambassador at his residence in Guatemala City. We'll spend the weekend celebrating in Antigua before all heading off to our separate corners of the country on Sunday.

I know the positive experiences I'm having stand in stark contrast to the overall pattern of the world these days. I continue hearing about senseless acts of violence continuing to happen every day throughout the country. Listening to the international news, it seems that the rest of the world is falling apart while I'm here. Nonetheless, in the little forgotten corner of Guatemala I now call home, I have found reason for great hope and optimism.

2009-03-17T06:44:00.000-07:00

AND YOUR HOME FOR THE NEXT 2 YEARS WILL BE...

They had us close our eyes, all of us along the line of the basketball court with a big map of Guatemala drawn in chalk. One by one they took us by the hand and led us to our new homes for the next 2 years. As Sergio, our program director (ie my boss) relished leading my stumbling across the country, I tried to follow my path. At first I felt myself headed north to Alta Verapaz, the lowland jungle of Guatemala, but suddenly Sergio turned my path sharply to the left, westward towards the highlands. Where was I headed? To Huehuetanango, where I had visited the week before? Could it be to to Solola, the department of beautiful Lake Atitlan? I hoped it wouldn't be Chimaltenango. I suspected somewhere in Totonicapan, where we already knew the great bulk of our group would be heading. When we opened our eyes, I found my suspicions were correct as I looked at the information folder they had placed in our hands, and gazed for the first time at the name which would define my new destiny.

Unfortunately, for security reasons I'm not allowed to actually post the specific name of my site, but I can tell you it has a cool sound. It's in the very north of the department of Totonicapan, but far more isolated than the other sites in the south where the majority of the group is. I'm actually closer to the city of Santa Cruz de Quiche in the Quiche department. As I read through the information, my thoughts were a mixture of nervousness and excitement. While I am still nervous, I have to admit that the site is really pretty much everything I asked for during my interview a few weeks ago. The main point I tried to get across was for a site that was balanced—I didn't mind being isolated, but didn't want to be the MOST isolated site in the country. My new site is fairly “out there” in what I'd definitely describe as a forgotten corner of the country, but is only a half hour bus ride from a major city. It's pretty small, as I asked for, but not tiny, and has a market and basic services. I'd asked for a site with a large indigenous population, and my new home is 97% Quiche Maya—I'm greatly looking forward to throwing myself into learning the Quiche language (but we'll see how my enthusiasm holds up in a few months). There is at least 1 volunteer within I think about half an hour from me, and lots within a couple hours drive (unfortunately there isn't bus service to the rest of the province, so I think my friends in the other parts of the department will be further than they would be otherwise). One of the most significant aspects of my site is that it is new to the Healthy Schools project. While the rest of my colleagues will be replacing other volunteers and continuing the project in schools where it has already been established, I was the one volunteer assigned to a “first generation” site. The good news is that I'll get to spend a lot more time in the classroom, and should hopefully be able to really make progress in introducing the project in the schools and getting things going. The challenge, however, is that everything will be new, and it seems like I really have my work cut out for me. From what I've heard from other volunteers, a lot of my time will be spent just explaining who I am and what I'm doing here, and I'll need to keep my expectations realistic for the pace of change and progress.

After getting over the initial shock and excitement, and comparing our sites with everyone else, most of us headed to Antigua for a celebration. I couldn't stay long however, because I had to go home and pack for our trip to Esquipulas with our host families. Every year the family makes a religious pilgrimage to the holy city, in the east of Guatemala near the border with Honduras.

That night we loaded onto the bus at around midnight. At 5 a.m., after a long, awful ride of trying in vain to get comfortable on the school bus seats, endlessly trying different positions to rest my head somewhere, all the while with music blaring through the speakers, we arrived in the bus terminal of Esquipulas. It was still dark, and Glenda and Daly went to find us a hotel (they explained that if us Gringos went, they would try to charge us more money, although I'm pretty proud of my bargaining skills and wonder if I could have helped out). After they found a place and we dragged our bags a few blocks to the hotel. The first thing we did after depositing our bags in our rooms was to walk the 2 blocks to the main cathedral—an enormous white building with 4 enormous symmetrical bell towers at each corner. A large park surrounds the cathedral, and it was filled with trees with pink blossoms which reminded me of Washington D.C.'s cherry blossoms around this same time of year. A large market selling a mixture of souvenirs and religious trinkets was adjacent to the park. Mass was just starting, but we got in a line at the side of the building. After waiting several minutes, we came to the statue of the “Cristo Negro”--the “Black Christ”. I didn't quite understand the significance, but apparently it's a very important statue and is known and visited by religious pilgrims throughout all of Central America. After having a few seconds to pray in front of the statue, the person would back away slowly, never turning their back to Christ until they reached the exit at the side of the building.

Back at the hotel, we had breakfast right as light was finally filling the sky. They had cooked food the night before in Xenacoj, and in order to save money continued to cook pretty much ever meal the entire weekend on little camping-style barbeque stoves with open fires heated by fire wood. It was a lot of fun to all eat together out in the parking lot, a combination of camping and tailgating! We had to sigh, however, that even on vacation it seemed at times that all the women did was cook.

After breakfast we left the hotel walking towards the giant hill/small mountain a few kilometers away. “Abuelita” (literally “little Grandmother”, the 85 year old great grandmother of the family who speaks Kakqchiquel and only a bit of Spanish) came with us, and I was quite impressed by her drive and stamina, even though she eventually did get in a tuk-tuk to bring her up the final stretch. When we arrived at the mountain, the procession stopped at each of the 20+ stations to do a prayer and penitance. Each station represented different parts of the crucifixion of Christ, and the idea was to experience the pain and suffering he endured on the cross.

I had such mixed feelings about the whole thing, as I did at many times throughout the weekend. For one side I see Christianity as a religion brought and imposed upon the indigenous population by the invading Spanish conquistadores. Ironically, Guatemala's indigenous population are usually the most devoutly faithful. The only explanation for this that I can see is that it is a way for these people who have suffered and continue suffering through so much injustice in this life to make sense of this unfairness, and to have hope for a more just future in the afterlife. Unfortunately most people are ignorant of the country's history, the rich culture that existed before the arrival of the Spanish, and the brutal history that came with Christianity's arrival to Guatemala. Nonetheless, on the other hand, Christianity has now become the established religion, a religion that is probably more dominant in this country than in any other that I have seen. Despite my reservations and problems, it is undeniably arrogant and patronizing to criticize the culture and its beliefs, whatever their origin. Moreover, only an arrogant or deeply cynical person would fail to be touched by the sincerity, the humbleness, the unity and genuine hope represented by people expressing their faith as they do in Esquipulas. Women and men, children and old people alike, all united in a common faith. I must admit I was a bit envious of the simplicity and purpose these strong religious beliefs seemed to bring to the people.

The following day we slept in and spent the morning and early afternoon at a local park and river which people swam in. We cooked carne asada (“grilled meat”), joked around, and relaxed in the shade . Guatemalan music blared in the background, and I realized how much a part of this country I've become when I realized that I could sing along to almost all of the songs.

The highlight of the entire trip for me came that afternoon. I was hanging out in the parking lot of the hotel when Chica motioned for me to come over. She brought me into her room and handed me a black plastic bag. I opened it to find a beautiful white T-shirt with a woven design of a Quetzal and other patterns, and the word “GUATEMALA” written in big letters. “We wanted to give you a present, said Chica. “I hope you like it.” My eyes became moist as I realized how much I had connected with my new family, and how much I'm going to miss them.

After another long long bus ride yesterday, we arrived back in Xenacoj around dusk, pleasantly surprised that Egma, the family's sister in law, had made Chuchitos (“little pigs”--corn dough filled with little pieces of pork, wrapped in corn husks and boiled—kind of like tamales) for everyone, and we had a wonderful final dinner before heading off to shower and go to bed.

This morning we headed back to the Peace Corps center to meet our counterparts—representatives from our projects from the communities we'll be working with who came to meet us, do some activities, and escort us to our new communities tomorrow. I greeted Julio, the director of schools in my community, and Lucia, a teacher at one of the schools I'll be working in. They seemed like very nice people, genuinely interested both in getting to know me and working with me. I'm excited and nervous to head to my site tomorrow. They told me a bit about the community, but it is all still a mystery to me. What will it be like? Will there be enough to do, or I be bored? Will it be too hot, or too cold? Too dry? Will it be pretty? Most importantly, will I be able to find local friends to share my time and experiences with, or will I be lonely? Only time will tell. It's getting late, so I suppose I should stop writing and get some rest.

I'm probably more nervous right now than I've ever been since arriving in Guatemala.

2009-03-11T20:13:00.000-07:00

We are all very excited to receive our site assignments TOMORROW! It´s strange to think that the next to years of my life are still such a mystery--Even though I´ve been in country almost 3 months, most of the people I´ll meet and become close with, the places I´ll get to know like the back of my hand, are still a big question mark.

Today was my fellow trainee Adrian´s birthday, and we just had a very nice dinner for him followed by dancing and lots of laughter. We realize that we´ll only be in Xenacoj a few more short weeks, and will be saying goodbye to our new families with mixed emotions. Tomorrow we´re all going on a long weekend vacation to Esquipulas with our families--more details to come.

This afternoon we did a ¨Taller¨ a ¨Workshop¨ for Joel and Cesár, the 2 teachers at the school in San Antonio that we´ve been working with the last 2 months. After cooking them a lunch of cheese empanadas from scratch, we did a variety of activities, such as activities and discussions designed to identify goals and ideas on how to improve the school, as well as information on educational methodology, the participatory learning cycle, etc. I led a discussion about classroom management and different learning styles. We were a bit nervous beforehand, especially since we did the planning a bit last minute, but everything seemed to really go well, and our technical trainer Carlos told us we did an excellent job. It made us realize that we actually have learned alot and that we may just make it here after all!

The only major recent event was my trip last week to visit Katie, a Healthy Schools volunteer in Huehuetanango, a highland province in the Northwest of Guatemala right below the Mexican border. I had a wonderful 3 days. The over 5 hour bus ride was beautiful and actually enjoyable, and I realized that sitting on busses for hours on end no longer seems to phase me in the slightest. The first morning we hiked 2 and a half hours up a mountain to one of Katie´s schools.
It was tiring but gorgeous--from the top we could see 5 of Guatemala´s over 30 volcanos, all spread out across the sweeping landscape. Distant volcán de fuego (which is visible from here in Xenacoj from another angle) was puffing smoke at frequent intervals. The most interesting thing I learned was the fact that at the 3 schools Katie works in, all different places on the same mountain, they speak 3 different indigenous languages! While I would love the opportunity to learn one indigenous language, I think 3 may be a bit much. I really enjoyed seeing a different part of Guatemala I hadn´t visited before, and was relieved to visit a volunteer in a more isolated site that seems to have adjusted successfully. I loved Katie´s house halfway up a hill at the foot of the mountain, especially the hammock hung in front of her front door. As much as I´m coming to appreciate Guatemalan food, I was in absolute heaven to get some comfort food home-cooked by an American... Cheese sandwiches, Spagetti with fresh tomato sauce, different types of tea, and trader Joe´s dark chocolate, YUM!

2009-03-03T15:44:00.000-08:00

This morning we went to the school in San Antonio, and I was pleasantly surprised by the progress being made there. A fresh coat of cement covers the soccer field, replacing the dusty patch of dirt previously there. The bathrooms now have running water, so the kids can use the toilets and wash their hands at school. We arrived during recess, and a mother was distributing snack, a sweet white oatmeal-like mixture, from a giant pot—the money from the government to buy snacks has finally arrived, and local mothers take turns cooking. We practiced giving health lessons to the kids—I gave a class about the 5 senses with an activity where the kids walked a mini-obstacle course in pairs, one kid with eyes closed and the other as a guide. It went well, the kids greeted us warmly and seemed a lot more active and receptive than in the past. It was very encouraging.

This afternoon my fellow trainee Sarah came over to watch a movie at my house, but we ended up skipping the movie in favor of siting out on the patio with my host mom Chica and chatting for almost 2 hours. We talked about life, family, her aspirations for her kids. She also told us about her life before getting married—old boyfriends, how she and her sisters ended up with their respective spouses, and other stories from her life. She's only about 10 years older than I am, but has already been married nearly 20 years. It was so nice just sitting and relaxing, hearing her perspectives about things.

The other night I woke up at 3:30 a.m. to go to the bathroom. When I need to get up during the night I often use my cell phone screen as a flashlight to see where I'm going. Half asleep, I fumbled with the buttons to make the screen light up. As I raised the curtain to walk into the bathroom, I glanced at the screen and realized, to my horror, that I had accidentally hit the call button and had called Glenda, the 23 year old host sister of my fellow trainee Adrian. I didn't know if the call had gone through yet, and immediately hung up. I didn't know what to do, but didn't think calling back and trying to explain myself would be a good idea, so I just tried to go back to sleep.

The next morning when Chica went over to Adrian's house to pick up fresh tortillas, Glenda asked if everything was alright with me, and Chica came home asking me what happened. I did my best to explain the situation, hoping she would believe me and not think the Gringo had lost his mind and was actually stalking her sister. Fortunately I was able to explain myself sufficiently—I don't know what I would have done if I didn't speak Spanish—and went right over to talk to Glenda.

Glenda is a very exceptional young woman in Guatemala. She is exceedingly outspoken and quick witted, sometimes to a fault. She reminds me of Beatrice from Shakespeare's “Much Ado About Nothing”. I love hanging out with her and matching wits, going back and forth sarcastically, always in good humor.

I arrived at her house and, with much embarrassment, attempted to explain the situation. Fortunately, despite waking up the house in the middle of the night, everyone took the situation with a laugh, and it's now become a family joke. Glenda told me that if I need help going to the bathroom again to please just call a few minutes prior.

The last week has been very pleasant, and training seems to be winding down (even though there's still almost a month left). Last week we had a pleasant visit with Ame, another volunteer in the field. We also got to make a few afternoon visits to Antigua, the beautiful colonial city surrounded by volcanoes an hour away from here. Last Saturday we went to Monterico, a gorgeous black sand beach on the Pacific Guatemalan coast. Despite the 4 hour commute to get there (as well as a 4 hour return trip), we had a wonderful time sitting in the sand, swimming in the warm blue waves of the pacific, and sipping cold cervezas. On Sunday my good friend Erin came to visit Xenacoj. By coincidence it was Sarah's host sister and host father Martha and Porfirio's birthday, and we had a very pleasant birthday celebration with them, then went to a cafe in San Lucas for a while in the afternoon.

Yesterday we had a pizza lunch with the U.S. Ambassador at the Peace Corps office. I was pretty impressed by his candor—he spoke fairly openly of the involvement of the U.S. Government, his predecessor in fact, in the 1954 coup which ousted the democratically elected Arbenz government in Guatemala. He spoke and answered our questions for 2 full hours, giving us advice for the next 2 years. I enjoyed the experience and look forward to meeting him again for our swear in at the end of the month, which will be at his residence in Guatemala City.

2009-02-25T09:35:00.001-08:00

I came across this article in last weeks edition of the economist magazine--

http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13063298&fsrc=nwlgafree

It is a fascinating report about the rise of the middle class in the developing world, a group which, according to the report, now makes up a majority of the world's population. I particularly appreciated it because it described a phenomenon I've seen again and again in my travels throughout numerous countries. The discussion of how middle class people across countries think largely the same way as each other—in contrast to very poor or very rich people— really resonated with me, and is an observation I've also noticed again and again. I've often thought about how I have more in common with my middle class Argentine friends I made while studying in Buenos Aires—the way we see the world and our place in it, our hopes for the future, challenges, frustrations, and even tastes in books and music—than I would with many Americans, or than they would with other Argentines of different backgrounds. Moreover, I've laughed to myself many times while seeing how similar my host siblings act to American kids. While my host mother Chica laments never having the opportunity to have an education, my host brother Erick seems more concerned with hanging out with his friends and listening to music than studying, much to the chagrin of his parents. While it often seems that the more I learn, the more questions I have and the less I understand, reading this article and realizing how much it resonated and connected with my experiences in the past few years showed me how much I have learned and can understand about the world in a way that I never could have earlier. Moreover, the article gave me cause for some optimism by demonstrating that despite the tremendous challenges facing the world right now—economic and political turmoil, environmental degradation on a scale never before seen on our planet (while the new middle class is only straining the world's resources even more), and the vastly disparate distribution of wealth created by globalization and economic growth—most people are coming to live better lives, making enough money to not only get by but to also plan and invest for a better future, for example by sending their children to school. I certainly have grave concerns about the future of our planet when I read what's happening in the world right now, but was encouraged to have this reason for hope.

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We returned a few days ago from our week of field based training in Totonikapan, a province about 4 hours west of here in the Guatemalan altiplano, or highlands. Last Sunday morning we loaded our luggage and piled into 2 Peace Corps 15 passenger vans, en route to Toto. Located in a high, wide valley, we were warned to bring warm clothes because the weather in Toto was colder than it is here in Xenacoj, but fortunately we encountered pleasant days the entire week.

The days were long; I brought my jogging clothes and hoped to keep running while I was there, but only ended up getting back to the hotel with enough daylight left to run 1 day the entire week. All 16 of us stayed in a hotel in downtown, a block from the central park/market. It was simple and clean, and we enjoyed the opportunity to hang out and get to know each other better during the evenings. The nicest part was the opportunity to eat out every night at local restaurants. By American standards the selection was rather limited, but to us it was a bonanza—literally, the finest restaurant in town being called “Bonanza”, where we stuffed ourselves with burritos and garlic bread our last night. There was also a pretty decent pizza restaurant, a taqueria (taco restaurant), and the “Esteak house” (In Spanish there is never an 'S' followed by a consonant at the beginning of a word) with delicious meat. Nevertheless, I found myself missing my “home” and my family in Xenacoj by the middle of the week, and the text messages they sent my phone to check up on me made me feel very happy.

The plan for the week was to visit 1-2 different schools and a different volunteer every day. Each morning we'd pile into the vans and drive an hour or two to different parts of the region. Every day had a different theme and objectives to learn about, such as the process of certifying schools as “healthy”, how to plan and manage small projects (such as building water faucets to wash hands or latrines, for example), and how to run training workshops for teachers. We went to so many schools they are already running together in my mind. Nonetheless, for me the most interesting part of the week was seeing the great diversity between different schools in just one small corner of Guatemala. For example, the first school we went to was full of energy. As we walked from classroom to classroom and greeted the students with “Buenos Dias”, they would all reply in unison at the top of their lungs. We introduced ourselves and I told a few jokes in Spanish in one of the classrooms. After seeing all the classes it was time for recess, and I had a great time being goalie in a game of soccer, being careful not to let the ball go off the side of the edge of the earthen field, down the precipice below (this seems to be a problem at lots of soccer fields in schools I've visited throughout Latin America). I also taught the kids to play hackie sack, and to play “sharks and minnows”. When we were leaving to say goodbye and I was shaking all the kids hands, I suddenly found myself surrounded by a sea of little people. All of a sudden they were all grabbing my hands at once and I couldn't get them free. I ended up having to yank away, run to the waiting van, and close the door quickly. It was quite an experience—now I know what a rock star feels like!

Another school, by contrast, was in a more rural indigenous area, and the kids were much more low-key and timid. I could immediately see the curiosity on their faces as we entered the schoolyard, which had a spectacular panoramic view of the surrounding area and mountains. Nonetheless, as I tried to interact with some kids, in contrast to the first school they were much quieter and shyer. All the schools we visited were very different—some were large, others were small; some had been working with the healthy schools project for years while others were just beginning the project. All of the teachers we spoke with were friendly, enthusiastic, and welcoming-- much to my relief, as the biggest worry I have as a volunteer is to arrive at a community that's indifferent to my presence. As we piled in and out of the van seeing many new places and countless new faces, I couldn't help but wonder what the schools I will work in will be like, how my new students and co-workers will react to my presence, how my community will accept me and if I'll be able to make friends; in sum, how successful I will be in my new life for the next 2 years.

We arrived back in Xenacoj around lunch time on Saturday, and I happily greeted my family and put my bag down in my room, feeling very much back at home. I've decorated my room with the most memorable pictures I printed from my travels the last several years, and looking around at them always brightens my day and inspires me to embrace this new adventure that I've embarked upon.

Yesterday after lunch, we went to San Pedro, the next town on the other side of the mountain, for the Carnival celebration. It was a wonderful chaos of carnival rides, food, music, and fire crackers. After a riveting ride on the bumper cars with Lupita, crashing gleefully into perfect strangers with impunity beneath the sparking metal wire grate which provided the electricity, we watched a local band playing their various instruments and dancing in unison in their matching camo outfits. We ate cotton candy, fresh fruit, and a crunchy sweet bar made from seeds and carmelized sugar. Afterwards, Sarah took Lupita for a ride on the ferris wheel. There were actually two ferris wheels right next to each other. Instead of the larger and slower one, the girls decided to go on the smaller, faster of the two. Once all the passengers were loaded into the rickety wood seats, the operator turned up the juice on the old tractor motor which had been converted for its present purpose. The old rubber belt connecting the engine to the wheel sped faster and faster, as did the passengers. Sarah later described her screaming as they were jolted around and around, up and down, all the while seeing nothing more than the neon lights of the ride, but we couldn't really hear her among the cacophony of sounds mixing together at the fiesta. A drunk man walked up next to the moving ferris wheel, which of course didn't have any safety railings, and dropped his liquor bottle, which smashed on the ground. I was afraid he was going to get hit by the swiftly moving wooden cars, but he wandered away after a few minutes. When the ride was finally over, the girls got off, wide-eyed and speechless. Before leaving, we followed the procession of people carrying the statue of San Pedro from the city cathedral, the music from the brass band accompanying the procession competing with the loudspeakers of the other band which was still dancing and playing full force on stage.

Today we re-grouped with our friends from the eco-tourism group, the other Peace Corps project that is training this cycle with us, and shared stories from our previous week. While we were jealous that they got to camp in national parks and go zip-lining, they were jealous that we got to eat steak and pizza and have hot showers every night, so on balance I guess we're even.

Our training period is now more than half over, and in a few short weeks we'll be getting our permanent site assignments, and in a few weeks after that heading out to our new homes for the next 2 years! Training has certainly had its ups and downs, but I've still yet to have any truly miserable days, and seem to still be cruising pretty high. From time to time, I still have mini-epiphanies about the fact that I'm actually, finally, here in Guatemala. Despite the growing normalcy of my daily life, I'm still trying to appreciate things as much as possible.

After dinner tonight, I went with my host parents Chica and Carlos to visit the altar of Santo Domingo. As they knelt to pray in front of the statue at the table, covered with flowers, candles, and burning incense sending scented smoke rising up to the ceiling, I was touched by the demonstration of their faith; the hopes they have for their family, and for the future.

2009-02-15T08:03:00.000-08:00

I've been lazy about writing the last few weeks. I've been settling into life here fine. Things are feeling more routine now, less new and exciting than they were when I first got here. The sight of women dressed in guapils walking down the street with baskets on their heads speaking Kaqchiquel barely catches my attention anymore. I'm getting pretty adept at riding the buses, and no longer feel weird about climbing over people through the aisles or speaking up if the “ayudante” (the guy who collects the money) tries to short change me.

A few Sundays ago most of the group got together and hiked up to the base of Pacaya volcano. It was a nice hike with some great views of the surrounding area, and we enjoyed the opportunity to roast marshmallows on the hot volcanic rocks. We saw thermal vents and some steam coming from the top, but no lava. That night we had a 19th birthday party for my host sister Jaime (actually spelled Yelmi). I made her an enormous birthday crown out of balloons, and we had a great time dancing to Guatemalan music and eating tamales with everyone in the extended family. I introduced s'mores with the marshmallows I brought from the states (although I had to use a local substitute for Graham crackers) and they were a huge hit.

The most notable experience recently has probably been our visits to the primary school in San Antonio, a small “aldea”, or village, in the mountains surrounding Xenacoj. Just arriving is an adventure which takes over an hour. The first time we crammed into the van which would carry us up the winding road, at 6:20 a.m., the first hint of light was only beginning to appear in the sky. As it became brighter as we climbed through the hills, I realized everything was covered in a shroud of fog, and we could only see about 25 feet in front of us. We had to switch buses in another town called San Pedro, and the misty early morning scene felt completely surreal, like a dream. After an even more crammed ride (during which some of us had to get out and walk up the hill when the engine stalled on a steep incline), we got off at a small dirt road and walked another 2 km to the school. Located on the top of a beautiful valley among a few dozen small cement tin-roofed houses along a bumpy dirt road, the San Antonio school has 33 kids of varying ages. It goes from first to sixth grade, but kids ages don't necessarily correspond with their grade since they often don't start at the age they're supposed to. When we first arrived there was only 1 teacher/director for the entire school, although the municipality has since sent a second teacher to help him. There are 2 classrooms, 1 for the 1st and 2nd graders and another for the older kids. The school does not currently have electricity or running water, so when the kids need to use the bathroom they return to their homes. There is a dirt field outside where boys play soccer during recess. A brightly colored mural of flowers in a field against the backdrop of a blue sky adorns the exterior.

Our objective for the first few days was only supposed to be observing classes, but when we asked Joel, the 22 year old teacher, if he needed help, he gratefully accepted. Thus, fellow trainee Sarah and I found ourselves standing alone in front of 15 or so 1st and 2nd grade students on our very first day at the school. One of the things that was immediately obvious was that Spanish is not these children's first language. As we tried to go through the activities Joel had explained to us, the kids would whisper to each other in Kaqchiquel. I'd ask a kid a question and get no response. After thinking about it, I think the reason is partly because of the language barrier but more because the kids are shy. When it was time for recess I was grateful to hear Joel ask the kids to take out their toothbrushes and toothpaste, and everyone brushed and washed their hands with water from large barrels. At recress we taught them some games like “Sharks and Minnows” and “Assasin”, which they really enjoyed.

The first few days were pretty tough, as the reality of our lives for the next few years, the challenges we'll have to face on a daily bases, became immediately apparent. I can't help but compare the kids here to the kids I've worked with back in the U.S. In some ways they're so different. Kids here are much more shy and timid, I would imagine because they haven't had the same socialization and developmental opportunities. Probably also because they're tired from being undernourished and having to work in the fields when they're not at school. While working as a teacher in an American pre-school, I had access to pretty much all the materials and supplies I needed, while the rural schools here barely have anything, forcing teachers to get creative with what they have. Nonetheless, I've been very impressed by Joel. Despite the tough conditions, he always seems full of energy and has a smile on his face. He's patient with the kids and seems to work very effectively with them. I enjoy walking the hour back to Xenacoj down the mountain with and chatting with him, through cornfields with beautiful views of the Guatemalan countryside.

Despite the differences, I've seen again and again during my travels that kids are kids everywhere in the world. They all love to play and always love receiving attention and encouragement from caring adults. I've found my experience as a preschool teacher the last few years to come in incredibly helpful so far. Having worked in the schools a few weeks now, it seems to get easier every time we go. We're starting to get to know the kids better, and they're starting to know and listen to us more. They seem excited when they see us walking down the path towards the school, and were notably more interactive with us the last time we were there. I'm guardedly optimistic about the rest of our time working at the San Antonio school, and am hoping our presence there during training will at least make a small impact on the lives of the kids.

We've cut back to only 1 afternoon of Spanish class per week, and have also had more opportunities to visit volunteers at their sites independently. I've enjoyed getting to meet other volunteers, seeing their homes and communities and hearing about their challenges and progress. They also seem to always cook yummy food for us when we visit, which is always welcome!

Yesterday was Valentine's Day, and last night we went to a dance at the community center with some of our families. My host mom, Chica, was the only one of the mom's that went. There was a local band consisting of a singer, guitarist, bassist, a drummer, a few trumpet players, and no less than 3 trombones. They were all decked out in flashy red suits, and a banner behind read “Armando and his international band Los Retokes” I'm not sure what type of music it was exactly but definitely wasn't anything I'd ever seen before. When we first arrived everyone was mostly standing around, the guys in their cowboy hats and jeans, women split between modern skirts and the traditional handmade dresses. A few women even had pants on, a novel sight for us in Xenacoj. Before long, however, the dance floor began to fill up, and I made my normal awkward attempt to dance without looking overly ridiculous. Chica was out there in her guapil dancing up a storm. It was a fun night, and I stayed out until 11, the latest night I've had thus far in Guate.

In an hour the Peace Corps mini-van is going to pick us up to bring us to field-based training. For the next week we'll be staying in Totonikapan, a city up in the western highlands. We're staying at a hotel, and during the days will be visiting volunteers at their sites and doing different activities. I'm looking forward to a change of scenery, and am excited about the opportunity to get to know a new part of Guatemala.

2009-01-23T16:29:00.000-08:00

1/19/09
Today was a beautiful, sunny day, so this afternoon I decided to go to the park to read. When I arrived, the central square was already full of motion—women sitting on the benches chatting, teenagers playing soccer, and the gardener sweeping. No sooner had I sat down to read when a guy on a bicycle stopped in front of me and said, in barely inteligible English, “How are you?” I chatted with him for a few minutes—first a few broken phrases in English, after which he was grateful to switch to Spanish. He told me a bit about his experiences working in the U.S. after crossing the border “mojado”or “wet” --in other words, illegally.

All of a sudden I heard a band playing and people started flowing out of the church. Judging by the sad melody and slow, rhythmic motion of the people, I realized it was the funeral for the old woman who had died yesterday. I went to watch the procession pass, and decided to follow. Despite a few curious glances, and smiles and pointing from children, I don't think anyone minded. The procession and music reminded me a bit of the opening scene from The Godfather: Part II. For me, it was powerfully moving. After a few songs by the band, the crowd sung an a Capella chant or mourning, the casket visible over the heads of the mourners crowding the narrow streets. As we entered the gates of the cemetery several blocks later, I was struck by the brilliant image of the Guatemalan landscape which the graves overlook. The enormous Volcano (I still haven't learned it's name) towered clearly in the distance, and the sinking sun lit the afternoon sky orange and gave a transcendental aura to the entire scene. The crowd broke up briefly, as families went to greet their loved ones' graves. Everyone came together for more prayers and doleful chants, before proceeding to the gravesite, where the coffin was lowered into an above ground cement grave and covered on the spot with cement. I was reminded of my own grandmother's funeral only 9 months ago. Even though I had never met the woman, I was moved to tears by the scene, which was so sad and so beautiful all at once.

Death has been a recurring theme in my short time here in Guatemala. I have seen brief glimpses of the difficulties and suffering endured by people here; heard atrocious stories of the country's violent past as well as its violent present, bus crashes, natural disasters, exotic diseases and maladies, and other unsettling possibilities. At times I have wondered why I intentionally put myself in a place with higher risk. Experiences like today make me remember why I'm here. The intensity, the opportunity to see and do things I've never seen or done before, the beauty and suffering of every day life, it all makes me wake up every morning feeling so alive. I wouldn't have it any other way.

1/20/09

Inauguration day. We went to the Peace Corps training center in Santa Lucia Milpas Altas for our weekly day of group training. At 10:30, during a lively medical session about diarrhea with our Nurse Kathy, we stopped abruptly to turn on CNN for coverage of the inauguration. It was very exciting to be watching this historic event with my fellow volunteers. I was most proud when President Obama talked about America's commitment to assist the people of poor nations. As Peace Corps volunteers, we are not allowed to discuss our political beliefs. Nonetheless, we are all optimistic of the new direction our country has taken and proud to represent the American people in Guatemala as Peace Corps volunteers.

1/23/09

Today, after finishing our Spanish class we were informed that there was a protest about to start in front of the municipality building in the town center. Apparently there's a highway project that controversial because it passes through private land and was being protested. We wanted to go see what it was about but were told that it was too risky--I have to admit that it would be hard for the white people who are taller than any of the locals to blend in to the crowd. Apparently the riot police were called and they sometimes use tear gas. So, instead we spent a few hours at Sara's house playing with the kids.

2009-01-18T15:35:00.000-08:00

Today is Sunday, my first real free day since I arrived in Guatemala. I woke up and went to the market to pick up a few things. I love walking and looking at the fresh fruits and vegetables, some of which I know, others of which are completely foreign. The most exotic item I saw for sale was fresh Iguana—dried and cut open, ready to cook and eat!

I cooked my family a typical American breakfast, or as best as I could manage with local ingredients. The hash browns were a hit! I told them I'm going to make banana pancakes one of these days, and smores as well. After meals I enjoy sitting around the table and chatting about all sorts of topics with my host family. The custom is to say “muchas gracias” after finishing your food, after which everyone at the table says “buen provecho”.

We had Spanish class and technical training throughout the week, and went to the municipality building and met the mayor a few days ago. He was very receptive and offered to help us however he could. We've also paid visits to the fire and police stations. Yesterday my three fellow volunteer trainees and I went to Antigua, supposedly the most beautiful colonial city in Guatemala, surrounded by 3 volcanoes and full of colonial architecture, churches, and colonial ruins. We met up with some others from our training class and got some nachos and beers. It was fun, but I really missed hanging out with my family!

This afternoon a bunch of us from the various families walked up to see the corn fields. We all had a wonderful time joking and playing around. I brought a hacky sack, which quickly became a source of amusement for everyone, kids and adults alike!

I've only been in Xenacol a little over a week, but it's feeling more and more like home every day.

2009-01-18T15:25:00.001-08:00

I've been in Guatemala less than a week, and already I feel like I could write an entire book about my experiences thus far. My new life feels like a wonderful dream, I couldn't have asked for things to be going better.

After an afternoon of orientation in Washington D.C. we headed to Reagan international airport bright and early for our 6 a.m. flight. We had a layover in Miami, where I had yet another last meal in a small diner near the airport with my brother and Grandmother, who happens to be renting an apartment for the winter in West Palm beach, and made the half hour drive to see me. After saying our goodbyes, I was off to my new home for the next two years.

After a short hop over the pond also known as the Caribbean sea, we touched down in Guatemala City, where we were met by Peace Corps staff. We had a short orientation in the Peace Corps compound in a small town between Guatemala City and Antigua, and then moved in with our new temporary host families. Walking down the street for the first time, I was overwhelmed by the 3 enormous volcanoes which surrounded us. My fellow volunteer Adrian and I went to play soccer in the central park with the family's 2 young sons.

The first few days are a blur, and seem to have happened ages ago already. I remember we had lots of orientation meetings with various Peace Corps people, and several injections by the medical staff. My 31 fellow trainees and I seemed a bit nervous, but very excited, and are all still very cheerful and enthusiastic.

For me, my time in Guatemala didn't truly start until my third day in the country, when we finally moved into our “permanent” (temporary) training communities, where we will live for the next 3 months. I am now living in the municipality of Santo Domingo Xenacoj (pronounced “Shen-ah-koh”), a very traditional Guatemalan town of several thousand families, most of them of indigenous of direct Mayan ancestry.

From my first moments in Xenacoj, I was amazed at the mixture of tradition with modernity. Walking through the streets from the central plaza, where there is a beautiful church and perfectly kept park, across the street is a bustling market, where local produce and fresh bread is sold alongside all types of clothing as well as pirated CDs and DVDs. Spread throughout the center of town are several internet cafes. On the street, most of the women are dressed in traditional hand woven dresses with beautiful colors and spectacularly intricate floral designs. Many walk with heavy loads balanced effortlessly on their heads. On the street, along with the various genres of music playing, one hears a mixture of Spanish with Kaqchiquel (“cack-chee-kel”) the local Mayan dialect whose pronunciation seems to rely heavily on parts of the throat that I never knew existed. Fortunately everyone except the very old seem to speak Spanish, and a greeting of “Buenos dias/tardes/noches” is almost always meet with a smile and a response in kind (I've begun trying to learn the greetings in Kaqchiquel but so far haven't had much luck being understood)

The highlight of my first week in Guatemala has been the wonderful family I am living with, who have already accepted me as part of the family. My 18 year old host sister Jamie (pronounced the same as we'd say in English) patiently showed me around the house the first day. The second sibling is 16 year old Erick—I couldn't believe he has the same name as my own brother Eric! Erick is very friendly and loves music, and we get along very well. The youngest of the family is 12 year old Lupita, who I simply adore. During lunch on the first day, she smiled at me with a mixture of shyness and curiosity. Nonetheless, after I made balloon animals for everyone, she quickly came out of her shell, and has such a happy smile. My host mother and father, Chica (short for Francisca) and Carlos are very kind, and both have gone out of their way to make me feel welcome.

After lunch on the first day, I gave my host family a few small gifts from the U.S.--a calendar with landscapes from the Western U.S., some chocolates, maps of the Steamboat Springs ski area and the New York Subway system, and a bottle of raspberry syrup. The winner was definitely the syrup—everyone (especially Carlos) began eating it at every meal, and within a few days the entire bottle was gone!

The first night they proudly showed me a DVD of the marimba band that Carlos plays in. The traditional instrument of Guatemala, the marimba is like a xylophone, I think the only difference is that it's made out of wood instead of metal. Carlos plays the tambor drums, and they're really an impressive group. Apparently they're going to possibly tour the U.S. This august, it would be great if it works out!

After the DVD, I showed them pictures of my own family from my going away party. (By the way, Mom, they say you have a very nice house!) I showed them a few other pictures from my travels; they were fascinated and asked to see more. I showed them more and more pictures, and they kept asking to see more. They loved the video of me jumping off a cliff into the snow in Steamboat and laughing in delight, as well as the picture of me riding the bike underwater in Utila, Honduras, and Chica keeps talking about the video of me swimming headfirst into the silt while SCUBA diving in the Philippines. I showed pictures for over an hour, and this morning Carlos asked if I'd show them some more tonight!

The other night I taught Lupita, Erick and Carlos how to play “UNO”. They loved it, and we've played a few nights since then. Lupita and Erick picked the game up in a matter of minutes, but Carlos took a bit longer. He kept on getting confused about which card to put down, and Lupita, always the loyal, loving daughter, would patiently explain “Papa, you need to put down a blue or a 7...No, not that...Yes, that works!”

The family is for the most part very traditional and conservative, but with modern influences mixed in. The 3 females all wear traditional clothes, but Jamie has several piercings in both ears and Erick wears Jeans and Abercrombie t-shirts. They have a T.V. With rabbit ear antennae, and I have watched the Simpsons in Spanish a few times with them (although some of the more risque jokes are a bit embarrassing to watch in the presence of Chica). I don't think they have a refrigerator (unless it's somewhere I haven't seen out of the kitchen) and don't have running water. There's one large cement sink outside, but water only comes every other day, and the water for daily use comes from large storage buckets. Adapting to bucket baths hasn't been much of a problem, and if the water is heated on the stove 20 minutes before hand it's not a big deal at all.

The family owns a small second house where they maintain a workshop. They make different clothing items which they distribute both within Guatemala and internationally. Chica brought me over to see it the other day, where I encountered the entire family—including all three children— working diligently on sewing machines. I had a pang of guilt to see little Lupita sitting at a sewing machine and think of her working hour after hour, when she should be out playing like 12 year olds in the U.S. Nonetheless, the entire family must work in order to get by, and fortunately when school starts in a few weeks Lupita and Erick will stop working in order to continue their studies. Jaime has already graduated and is in the process of looking for a permanent job. All three have impressed me with their intelligence and maturity, and with the changes that have come to Xenacoj in recent years I am confident that they will enjoy more opportunities in life than their parents and grandparents did.

The families of the other 3 volunteers in Xenacoj—Adrian, Amanda, and Sarah—are all within the same extended family, and we have all spent lots of time together getting to know the rest of the family. I am slowly learning everyone's names and family relationships. They are all wonderful people and I already feel at home in the others' houses. It is common to just stop by someone's house unannounced and stay and chat for an hour or more drinking coffee. On Sunday I learned how to make corn tortillas at Mama Chica's house (my host mother Chica's mother, the matriarch of the family). After a few attempts I got the hang of it pretty well, so I decided to get creative. While it would never cross the mind of a typical Guatemalan women to make anything but a uniform disk about 5 inches in diameter, I molded the soft dough into the shape of a heart, another into the shape of a moon, and another into the shape of a doughnut. Without saying anything, I put them onto the traditional metal stove where the other tortillas were cooking, heated by a burning log underneath. When someone finally noticed, everyone had a nice laugh. When a Guatemalan has trouble remembering my name, I help them by reminding them of the word “Travieso”, meaning “mischievous”, a word which has somehow stuck as my new nickname!

My first experience with Guatemalan public transportation was quite an adventure. I've been on some pretty crowded buses in my day, or at least so I thought. We started in Xenacol by piling into what in the U.S. Would probably be a 10 passenger van, but had been refitted with tighter benches to squeeze more people in—As we the van was winding through the hills from Xenaxol towards the main highway, I counted no less than 24 people crammed in! I assumed that our next transport—a full sized American school bus—would be more comfortable. Sadly, I was mistaken. I remember, 20 years back, riding the same kind of bus, we would always complain if we had to fit more than 2 of us into 1 bench. Little would I have imagined that in Guatemala, 3 full sized adults are expected to pack the seats, with the overflow standing in the aisles. Old people, women carrying babies, all casually squeezing by each other towards the front or back exit, all the while music blaring in the background. The first trip was a somewhat stressful adventure. I imagine it will become more routine in the future, but I imagine that being a commuter in Guatemala will not be the highlight of my Peace Corps experience.

Last Sunday I joined my family for mass at the Xenacoj Catholic church. The service was bilingual, in both Spanish and Kaqchiquel. We sat way up near the front, and I was rather self conscious of being the tallest person in the building, my head towering far above those of the surrounding Guatemalans. It was a beautiful experience—the sounds of singing, smell of incense, and the sights of people humbly praying on their knees.

In the mornings we go to the “Jardin Secreto”, or Secret Garden, for Spanish class with our maestro Don Felipe. An indigenous man whose native language is Kaqchiquel, Felipe is calm, patient, and funny. I think he we can learn much from him, not just about the Spanish language. He's begun to open up and tell us a bit more about his beliefs and life experiences, specifically his experiences during the Civil War here in which hundreds of thousands of people (predominately indigenous people like himself) were killed, many in genocidal massacres. It sounds like he's lived an interesting life, and I hope to learn more about it, as well as about the history and experiences of the Guatemalan people.

I've made it a personal goal to get back in shape while here. In addition to eating a lot less and a lot healthier (way less meat and way more fruits and veggies, pretty much all of which are organic), I've also taken up jogging in the mornings before class. It's a great way to get to know the area, and I love seeing the various sights of the early morning as I listen to my music and have the opportunity to reflect to myself.

As much as my life has changed in the last weeks and months (!), I'm happy to have the opportunity to settle back into a routine—something I come to crave during my periods of travel and constant change. I'm enjoying the process of adapting to my new life here in Guatemala and have nothing but optimism for my future time here.

The church is right around the corner, and the first bells for evening mass are beginning to ring. The birds are chirping, and I can hear some sort of music playing in the distance. The sun is setting and the clouds are turning orange over the partially finished house next to ours. Life is good.

2009-01-05T17:05:00.000-08:00

On the eve of my departure for the Peace Corps, I wish I had more profound thoughts to write about. As normal, I've procrastinated packing until the last second, and spent most of the day getting my life for the next 2 years together, first on my mother's living room floor, and now crammed into my trusty backpack and large Peruvian-lady market bag.

I can scarcely imagine what the next 2 years will hold in store. The adventures, challenges, and rewards; the sights, sounds, tastes and smells; the things I will see and experiences I will have; my daily routines and the infinite details which will enter my consciousness. I'm looking forward to the newness and change, but also for the opportunity to “settle in” somewhere, at least relatively speaking (2 years will be the longest I'll have stayed in one place for quite a while now) What I am most anticipating, however, is the people I will encounter and work with—my fellow volunteers, Guatemalan teachers, community members, schools kids, as well as my host family. The people who, hopefully, will have profound impacts on my life in the coming years are now just blank faces in my imagination. Likewise, my villages (I'll work in as many as 4), my house, the yard and future garden are all mysteries in my dreams (ahh, I can't forget the hammock where I'll read and watch the sunset—that's a must).

I was adding up all the time I've been abroad, and realized that all the international travel I've done in my life adds up to a bit less than 2 years. All the adventures I've had and friends I've made, as well as the homesickness and loneliness combined, is less than what I'm about to do all in one shot! It's an exciting and terrifying prospect, yet I feel calmer than I was expecting, aside from the occasional flash of anxiety. I feel that my past experiences have prepared me for what's ahead, most of all by preparing me to expect the unexpected. I know that things will get tough, yet I have more confidence knowing that I've been through some pretty tough times in the past. I will surely have setbacks and difficulties, yet they'll more than likely be things I haven't even thought about yet, so what good will it do to worry now about things I can't even imagine?

The last few weeks have been really great. I spent the last 3 weeks of December out in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, getting in my last ski days for the next 3 years. I stayed with my friends Brett and Brian, and saw lots of old friends—top of the list were Aaron and Aneta, who are getting married this summer, as well as my many friends at the preschool (who keep on growing!) and countless other friends from ski school and around town. I had a great time saying goodbye and telling everyone about my plans (being in the Peace Corps makes a great conversation starter!) and felt so fortunate to be able to attend my pre-school's annual Christmas play. And of course there was some unforgettable ski days. I was able to get hooked up with an employee ski pass, but only ended up working 8 days and freeskiing 11 (I skied all 19 days straight when I was there—a new personal record!) I was only daring to hope for 1 good powder day, but was rewarded by phenomenal powder from the first week and a few truly epic days. I had a great time ripping up my mountain, exploring my favorite places and running into friends on the slopes. It's a lifestyle I'll miss a lot. One day during Christmas week it snowed over 24 inches in 24 hours! I was working that day but got some great turns in before and after work (and during my class when I wasn't picking up kids). I had one unforgettable back-country run into Fishcreek Canyon with Aaron and Aneta (despite Aneta's protests!) and got to jump some 20 cliffs into waist-deep champagne powder. Incredible! I made new friends and worked hard to get my share of happy hours at the bars in for the whole year by the time I left. I also taught ski classes for 8 days—enough to pay for the trip and leave a good taste in my mouth before the craziness of the holiday rush kicked into full swing. I couldn't help chuckle when I thought of how in some ways the kids I teach skiing to are so different from the kids I'll work with in Guatemala, but in the end kids are kids and like to have fun! I left feeling energized, refreshed, and optimistic--all in all I couldn't have asked for a better way to prepare for the next 2 years.

Last Saturday my mom hosted a wonderful going away party at her house in New Hartford, Connecticut. Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins from both sides, as well as friends from High School and College came from Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and even as far as Pennsylvania to say goodbye. I said a few words about how when my mom first offered to throw me the party, my biggest worry was that nobody would show up up, and how much it meant to me that everyone came to support me. In all, about 50 people came and it was a really memorable experience (the last time I can remember seeing so much of my family together from both sides was on my 10^th birthday party!) Thanks again, Mom!

From here I head to Washington D.C. for Peace Corps staging tomorrow afternoon, then on to Guatemala the day after. I'll have 3 months of training in a small town between Guatemala City and Antigua before beginning my actual project. I'm not sure how frequent my Internet access will be, but I should be able to write and post pics periodically.

2008-12-03T10:39:00.000-08:00

Sitting in the familiar surroundings of my father's house in northern New Jersey, on a cold fall day on the day before thanksgiving, I am experiencing familiar post-travel feelings. Did the last three weeks really happen, or were they just an incredible dream? Did I really float through a cloud in Colombia only the day before yesterday? Am I really going to spend the next 2 years in the Peace Corps in Guatemala? It is normal for my trips to form somewhat incongruous gaps in my “normal” life, but my experiences over the last three weeks have been so different from the preceding months, the direction of my life changed so drastically, that I can't help but wonder whether they really happened.

I arrived in Medellín, Colombia in the late morning, after a direct flight from New York, with some of the same feelings I am again experiencing now. Had I been among Manhattan's skyscrapers only a matter of hours earlier, only to again be surrounded on all sides by the truly skyscraping Andes mountains?

After checking into my hostel, I encountered the first of many pleasant surprises of the trip while checking my e-mail. I had received a message from a Peace Corps placement officer with a formal invitation to a project in Guatemala! As I read about my assignment spending the next 2 years working in rural schools facilitating basic health and hygiene projects, tears came to my eyes. I truly could not have asked for a more perfect fit. It seems very similar to the work I did with the Peace Corps in Peru last summer, an experience I absolutely loved. I will get extensive experience in the areas of both education and health care, arguably the two most important challenges for developing countries. I will get to work with children and parents, teachers and school administrators, as well as government officials in the ministry of education. I will get to play around with kids (using experiential methods such as games and songs is in the job description) while hopefully teaching them skills and habits which will benefit not just their lives, but the lives of their family and community over the course of many years. I will get to live and work in rural areas and experience a way of life fundamentally different from my own in a way my prior relatively short-term trips could have never allowed. Finally, I will receive extensive professional training from the Peace Corps in various areas such as educational methodologies, public health, the technical and theoretical aspects of development, and working with people from different cultures. It is my hope that following my service, this training and experience will lead me back to school for a post-graduate degree and career in some aspect of international development.

I hadn't expected to receive an invitation for several weeks at least, and my assignment will begin in early January of 2009, over a month sooner than I was expecting to depart. Going from sitting on my mom's couch bored less than a week earlier to preparing for the Peace Corps while in Colombia, my to-do list was rapidly expanding. Nonetheless, as excited as I was about my prospects for the next two years, I was also faced with the reality of being in Colombia for the next three weeks without having made any plans (I had only bought the ticket a few days prior in the first place).

I had read that Medellín was an excellent location for paragliding, and a very inexpensive place to learn, so I decided to take a tandem flight to try it out. The next morning, I took a bus up into the mountains overlooking Medellín for my first flight. As I ran with my pilot Alejandro down the runway (a grassy field at the top of a mountain), the glider inflated and my legs were lifted off the ground. My first sensations of flying, the ground sinking beneath my feet, wind rushing by my face, suspended in a harness underneath the enormous piece of fabric, was unlike anything I'd ever experienced before in my life. The minor movements in the wind were terrifying at first, as was a glance towards the rapidly changing ground. Nonetheless, I made an effort to slow my breathing and relax, enjoying the scenery and the experience of flying with the birds. After about 15 minutes we touched down in a small field far below. I knew immediately that this was a sport I wanted to pursue and decided to dedicate my time in Colombia to taking a paragliding course.

The next day I took the trip back up to the “voladero” (literally Spanish for “flying place) where I began my lessons. I learned the fundamental principals of lifting the glider off the ground and positioning it over your head for a launch, a feat which at first glance looks easy. I practiced for an hour or so with some success, but was forced to stop as more and more people began arriving on the field. It was a beautiful Sunday, a day that I was to learn was when all the local pilots come out to fly. People from the area come with blankets and tents to hang out and enjoy the spectacular scenery while watching the free show of gliders gracefully dancing in the sky. There is a small shack that serves grilled meat and local Colombian dishes. The enormous speakers blasting American 80s pop across the entire valley is the perfect ingredient for a great party.

My practice space was quickly taken over by spectators, and as paragliders continued taking off and landing around my head I decided to give up and enjoy the show. I turned my gaze out across the valley where half a dozen gliders joined the birds in spiraling around what I would later learn was a thermal current. Columns of rising warm air, thermal currents are a paraglider's elevator and can carry skilled pilots high up into the clouds. Other pilots cruised closer to the mountain, riding like surfers on waves of air called “dynamics”, the result of wind hitting against the side of a mountain and being forced skyward—carrying anything in its path along for the ride.

I watched in amazement at the aerial feats performed with such apparent casualness. A high flying pilot would abruptly drop towards the ground in a quick spiral, rotating around the glider at a nearly horizontal angle, relying on the centrifugal force of the rotation to keep the soft canopy from collapsing. In an even more daring maneuver known as “tumbling”, the pilot does a series of sharp turns before forcefully swinging himself up in the air, bringing his upside down body completely over the canopy before “tumbling” back down, again relying solely on centrifugal force to prevent collapse. And then there's the “giro de la muerte”, the “turn of death”, in which the bold pilot plays a game of chicken with the ground to see how low a dive he can perform. On two or three occasions I witnessed a pilot actually manage to grace the ground with his wing for a split second before catching wind and shooting back skyward. Other pilots used the rising wind near the edge of a cliff to hover motionless in the air, slightly lowering the controls to slowly descend to the ground, only to jump back up again and fly away like a superhero. The most terrifying event I saw was a “full stall” (pronounced in Spanish “eh-fool eh-stole”, in which the airflow across the wing is entirely stopped, lift completely disintegrates, and the glider begins sinking like a stone. On the occasion that I witnessed it, the stall only lasted for a few seconds before the airflow was restored and the pilot regained control—I believe the stall was induced by the pilot for the free fall effect it causes, but I can't be entirely sure. I didn't actually see anyone need to throw open their emergency parachute, but was told that it happens from time to time.

With the mixture of incredible stunts, cute girls and 80s music, it felt like I was in a “Top Gun”esque montage. As I watched pilot after pilot fly with such incredible agility and precision, I longed for the day that I'd be able to take to the air on my own.

My instructors, brothers Andrés and Alejandro, introduced me into the local paragliding community, people who reminded me quite a bit of the adventurous, fun loving but also hard working types that become ski enthusiasts. Also like in the skiing community, most of the pilots were men, but I also met a handful of female pilots, most of whom were young, beautiful, and fearless. Hanging out with these fun Colombianas made me begin scheming how and when I'd be able to come back to Medellín for a longer trip next time.

The following days were not nearly as much fun. During the week, the voladero converts back into just another field at the top of just another mountain, and my only companions during my training were my instructors and the occasional sheep. I spent the better part of a week practicing the takeoff sequence (without the reward of actually taking off, of course), which proved to be considerably more difficult and frustrating than it had at first glance. The goal is to run and lift the suspension lines so that the canopy inflates with air and positions directly over your head while you are moving forward, thus creating lift and allowing you to take off. There are countless parts of the procedure which must be integrated perfectly into one fluid motion, and time after time I would put my concentration on one aspect and in the process forget to do something else. The wind, as I quickly learned, is one of the most fundamental factors a pilot must account for, particularly during take-off, and learning was far more difficult during days where there was anything other than a gentle headwind. For each failed attempt, I would need to collect the glider, carry it back up the hill, position it carefully on the ground, untangle the suspension, and go through the actual launch technique of trying to run and lift the glider into the air. It was far more physical than I had imagined, and I soon had bruises on both arms from the repetitious motion.

On my second or third day of training, on one of the rare occasions when I actually got the glider properly into position I found myself running towards the edge of the runway. I stopped well before the edge, but realized that until that moment I had not truly considered the implications of my decision to learn to paraglide. One of these days, in the not too distant future, I would be expected to continue the motion I had been doing and jump off the side of a mountain. I was a bit perturbed by the thought.

My instructors were not always gentle. When I would forget to do something, or position the lines incorrectly, or make some other mistake, they would repeatedly point out my error and ask me why I had done the task wrong after they had already shown me how it was done. They would remind me of the serious nature of the sport and the need to concentrate. The fact that they didn't speak more than a word of English here and there did not help matters either, as my Spanish vocabulary is not perfect and my ability to process commands in Spanish takes a bit longer. The progress I initially made seemed to disappear as I got more tired and frustrated, and by the end of the week I found myself thinking about all the other things I could be doing with my vacation in Colombia and wondering if this decision had been a mistake.

After several days I took a day off in order to make a trip to the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá in order to apply for a special Peace Corps passport. I hadn't known that I'd need a special passport, and since my service was to begin so soon I wouldn't have time to wait until I got back to the U.S. to apply. The only hurdle was the distance—10 hours by bus from Medellín to Bogotá. I got on a bus around 9 P.M. and traveled throughout the night, unable to get more than a quick nap here and there due to the dubbed Jackie Chan movies, and later the blaring Colombian music which played through the night on the overhead speakers. The curvy mountain roads didn't help much either, and I suppose it was a good thing that I couldn't see the roads and accompanying steep abysses down the mountainsides through the dark. I did, however, see quite a few soldiers in the passing light of the bus, patrolling the roadside and manning checkpoints with automatic weapons close at hand. They, along with the highly visible military presence throughout Medellín, were evidence of the ongoing war which is still being fought with leftist guerrillas throughout much of the country. Despite the soldiers I saw, the parts of the country I traveled in are considered very safe, and I never feared for my personal security at all during my trip.

Upon my arrival at the bus station in Bogotá the next morning, I took a cab directly to the U.S. Embassy, where I went through a series of security checkpoints before arriving at the citizen consular services office where I presented my passport application. The local Colombian embassy staff seemed confused by my request. I wasn't sure if they even knew what the Peace Corps was. They gave me a different application to fill out before again changing their mind and deciding that the original one was correct, and they couldn't make up their mind about whether I needed to pay a fee or not. I was a bit worried until the chief consul came out and asked me in a friendly and casual American accent where my Peace Corps assignment was. It turns out he had been a PC volunteer himself in Africa in the 80s, and he took an immediate special interest in helping me out. He came around and escorted me back through yet another security checkpoint to his personal office, where he called the Peace Corps directly to inquire about the correct procedure for submitting the application. He told me all about his Peace Corps experience and subsequent life. Turns out he was from Colorado originally, and we discussed our favorite parts of the state. He gave me his card and told me to send him an e-mail letting him know how I was doing when I got settled into things in Guatemala. I thanked him profusely for his help before shaking hands and saying goodbye, smiling to myself as I left at having had the unique opportunity of making friends with the American consul in Bogotá. The experience almost made the long journey worth the effort, or at least so I thought until I got back on a bus for another 10 long hours, arriving back in Medellín less than 24 hours after I had left, of which over 20 had been spent on a bus.

Back at the voladero things gradually improved. As harsh as Andrés and Alejandro could be at times, they treated me very well, as a friend rather than a tourist or even a client. The two brothers had quite an interesting life story. They had grown up in a small town in the mountains surrounding Medellín. As children they had chased after the first paragliders that arrived in the area from Europe, helping pilots prepare and pack their equipment in exchange for small tips. Bit by bit they had learned about the sport and now, many years later, they now owned their own school. I was honored when they invited me to spend a night at the new house their family had recently built, and I enjoyed the opportunity as well as the beautiful views from the house.

After almost a week of practicing ground handling skills and reading about paragliding theory in my textbook, I was ready for actual practice flights at the training hill. After nearly two hours in a bus through the mountains, we arrived at our site—a large field surrounded on one side by trees, one side by a river, and the remaining two sides by steep slopes of varying heights. I noticed a metal soccer goal and about a dozen cows sitting in the shade of the trees, and made a mental note to avoid flying into these obstacles.

My first flight was a mere few seconds in length, but a whole lot more fun than just lifting the glider over my head. I spent two days working my way up to flights of gradually longer duration, practicing taking off, flying, and last but not least, landing. I gradually got the idea of how to time the final pulling down on the brakes (called “flairing”) in order to produce a smooth landing, with a few harder semi-crashes as well, which served as learning tools. Walking back up the hill in the hot sun was quite exhausting, but by the end of the second day I was taking off and landing fairly consistently with flights of upwards of 20 seconds. Finally, it was time for my first solo high flight.

The weather on the morning of my first solo flight attempt did not appear very auspicious. It had been raining the entire night before, and as I ascended into the mountains on my now familiar bus commute, we entered into a cloud ceiling a few minutes before the voladero. The plan was to do one final tandem flight with Alejandro in which I would take the controls, on then launch for my own solo flight. We waited for a window to open in the cloud cover before taking off, and I successfully followed Alejandro's instructions down to the landing area. The clouds had rolled back over the mountain, however, and we decided to wait until the following day for my solo flight.

Rather than improving, conditions the following day were even worse. Alejandro and I waited over an hour for the clouds to open a bit. He explained that the clouds themselves wouldn't pose a problem for my flight, but that the restricted visibility they caused would. When they partially opened, creating a temporary window for a few minutes, we seized our chance. Already strapped into my harness, I connected into the suspension with my carabiners and prepared my lines for takeoff, awaiting Alejandro's signal. “VAMOS!”, he yelled into the walkie talkie, and I sprung to action, running forward and lifting the lines over my head with all my strength. The effort, however, was apparently not enough, and rather than taking off I went crashing into a ditch. It wasn't the proudest or most fun moment of my life, but I made the decision to try again.

After again setting up the glider and picking some tangled ferns from the lines, I again prepared myself for takeoff. The second attempt was more successful, and I felt my feet leave the ground as the glider took off into the air. I was flying!

My excitement was short lived, however, as I soon got the sensation that I was sinking. What at the time seemed like an embarrassing indication that I was too heavy to be a paraglider was later explained to me to be an unusual flow of descending cold air right after the takeoff point. I was still flying comfortably above the ground, but appeared to be moving closer to some high power lines crossing the valley. “Travis, gira a la derecha”, Alejandro instructed via my radio with a less than casual tone in his voice. I lowered my right hand and turned slowly. Having moved to a more stable airspace, I stopped sinking and cleared the power lines, after which point I was able get comfortably seated in my harness and relax a bit. By that point, however, it was time for me to head to my landing area so that I had plenty of time to set up my approach. I made a direct heading without any deviations for my first flight, and arrived above the field with several hundred feet of altitude to spare. Mango, my landing assistant, gave me the wind direction over the radio and I began doing my landing pattern of figure eight turns into the wind in order to lose altitude.

Landing a paraglider is not overly complicated in normal conditions, but requires some concentration and judgement. The idea is to land facing the wind and to time your final approach so that you land in your intended site (neither landing early or overshooting it). You must come down with a fair amount of speed and pull down the brakes at the last second (If you do it to early you can swing up and slam backwards down to the ground) The landing field in Bello, a suburb of Medellín, was in a fairly urban area with lots of potentially hazardous obstacles on all sides, so the landing had to be pretty precise. When you are at altitude you seem to be floating horizontal and are unable to perceive your sinking to the ground. But as you get closer, the ground seems to quickly rush at you all at once. I continued my landing pattern under the radio instructions from the ground. When it was time for my final approach I turned the wing towards my desired approach. I swooped across the field, and came down with a huge SPLASH! I landed directly in a large puddle, falling forward into the mud on my hands. Nonetheless, despite the dirty clothes and boots, I got up and celebrated my first successful flight.

As the weather improved the following days I was able to make more flights, and they seemed to get more incredible each time. Take offs went much smoother, as my glider inflated quickly and lifted me easily into the air. As I became more comfortable in the air, the slight shakes and bumps that came with wind changes no longer turned my blood to ice. I would no longer hold my breath when my glider would sink after a turn. I was able to spend more time enjoying the incredible beauty and small details of the mountainside. After taking off, I would fly into a river valley and directly over an enormous waterfall. I never noticed it during the early flights when I just flew straight forward, but as I began doing more turns I was able to see and appreciate its superlative beauty.

By my third day of flight I was ready to attempt a bit of thermaling—using the thermal currents to gain altitude. The problem with thermals is that the mixture of warm and cool air necessarily creates turbulence, which as a beginner you normally seek to avoid. For that reason I started in a mild thermal, attempting to follow the birds in their upwards trajectory. The thermal proved to be too weak to get much lift, and I kept on missing the turn and leaving the rising air. Nonetheless, I was able to sustain myself for a bit, neither rising nor sinking, thus lengthening my flight by a few minutes.

On my last day of flight the weather had again become a bit yucky, and as I rode the bus up I was unsure whether or not I'd be able to fly. Nonetheless, when I arrived at the voladero I saw the clouds were clearing up pretty well, with only a few small white patches in the valley below. I discussed the flight plan with Alejandro and got my gear ready. After taking off and getting settled into my harness, I made a direct course for a nearby cloud. Ever since I was a kid I've always dreamed of flying through one of those puffy masses, and that day I got my wish. As I entered into the thin outer layers from the left side of the wall, my visibility was quickly reduced to a solid grayish white. I felt a cool moist breeze on my face, and a bit of turbulence shook the glider. Time seemed to stop as I floated blindly through the mist. After what couldn't have been more than 15 or 20 seconds, the outlines of houses far below in Bello began to appear through the white underneath my feet, and I soon popped out below the cloud and continued my flight.

In all I did 3 tandem and 8 solo flights, and couldn't have asked for a more incredible experience during my time in Colombia. I have had a small taste of paragliding and now greatly desire more time in the air. If I didn't already have plans for the next several years, I would right now be very seriously considering buying a glider and turning right back around to move to Medellín. Nonetheless, a few months ago when I first watched paragliders flying across the Yampa Valley in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, I would have never imagined that the goal of flying I made on that day would be fulfilled so soon. I am young and am sure that I'll have the chance to fly again some day.

As great as flying was, what really made my trip to Colombia was the people. Even after all the good things I heard about Colombia from friends that have visited the country, I still had my preconceptions and biases of what the place would be like. I could not have expected how genuinely warm and welcoming its people actually were. In addition to my instructors and the paragliding community they introduced me to, I seemed to meet friendly people wherever I went, especially on the bus. One day I sat next to an older women on the bus back to Medellín and chatted with her for most of the trip back—when we arrived at the bus station, Nora insisted on buying me an ice cream cone! I told her I'd never forget her and don't intend to.

I heard some very sad stories as well. One friend told me about how his grandfather had been killed by guerrillas who wanted to use his land to grow drugs. This is a country which continues to struggle against numerous challenges, but from what I observed it seems to be doing very well. The overall message I got from my time in Colombia was one of hope. After a few very challenging months before this trip, I have come back with a far different mentality from when I left. I would have never expected the turns my life has taken recently, but I now feel refreshed and rejuvenated, ready to take on the great challenges that lay ahead.

2008-11-13T13:34:00.000-08:00

2008-09-01T13:58:00.000-07:00

Publish Post

Sitting outside on a gorgeous morning at the end of August in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, almost exactly three years from when I first moved out here without any idea of what I was going to actually do when I got here, I'm finally feeling the inspiration, and actually have the time to write after several months. I realized yesterday that this is the first time I'll actually be spending consecutive weekends in the same place in months. I'm also reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography, a wonderful book which has given me lots of inspiration (and I'm only a third of the way through), part of which is to stop being lazy and start writing about my recent experiences.

I've been reflecting a lot recently about my life. Over three years have passed since I graduated from college, and I must admit that I've been having some doubts and uncertainty about my life at present. I was visiting my Mom in Connecticut last week (I now hesitate to say “I was home in Connecticut”) when I ran into the father of one of my friends from high school. I hadn't spoken with my friend in years, and speaking with her father, the first thing I realized is how out of touch I've become with my former life. It turns out my friend from high school is now the deputy press secretary for a U.S. Senator. I was happy for her, but the encounter definitely made me question my priorities.

Visiting different friends and family over the past few weeks in different parts of the country, I have had the same recurring observations. Everyone else is going about building lives, establishing their careers and buying houses, developing long term relationships; some are even getting married, having kids and getting a dog. As I wander around like a lost nomad, I can't help but be a bit confused about what to do now. While others are deciding on their latest home improvement, I'm facing the difficult decision of whether to travel to Africa or Southeast Asia this fall. This decision, however, doesn't have the same excitement for me as it did a few years ago. Now, other questions seem to occur more in my consciousness. How much longer do I want to continue this life of travel? Should I be focusing on more concrete, permanent goals? If so, what should they be?

I remember back in high school I used to think that when I went to college, I would gain knowledge and wisdom and all the answers would come easy after that. In college I realized this wasn't the case. When I graduated and started traveling, I had the hope that somewhere between all the diverse experiences I was having, a clear path would emerge. My greatest frustration recently is that this has not been the case. Looking back over the last three years, I know that I would not trade them for anything. Nonetheless, I've been wondering, with more frequency lately, whether I'm now just stalling, procrastinating to make a decision, by continuing to travel, or similarly, if I'm afraid to make any long term commitments or pursue any long term goals. I know that I would be more focused if I had something to set my mind to, but going back in a circle I am still unsure of what that should be. I'm still planning to go into the Peace Corps soon; in 6 months I hope to be busy and focused on all sorts of new things. Nonetheless, I can't repress doubt about whether this is really the right path for me, and whether or not I'll be able to be out of the country for 27 months.

Mandela's book, Long Walk to Freedom, has helped me gain perspective, showing me that in the course of an entire lifetime, three years is a really short period, and time well spent if one uses one's experiences during this time to build a life based on more solid foundations and knowledge. Nonetheless, it has also showed me that the decisions I make in my youth will, whether I want them to or not, determine my future and my destiny.

Another thing Mandela's book reminded me of is how rewarding it is to recall and reflect upon one's life experiences. I sat down with the intention of writing about my summer in Central America, so I suppose I should actually do that while I still have the motivation, and stop rambling about everything else going on in my head.

After my week traveling in Nicaragua before program, I picked up my first of two groups of students in Costa Rica at the San Jose airport. After a night in San Jose at the hotel Los Volcanes, we went Northeast, en route to the Caribbean Coast, and spent 3 days “camping” in the rain forest near the Saripiqui River (in parentheses because we were in permanent tents on wooden platforms with mattresses, electricity, and daily maid service to change the sheets). We went hiking to waterfalls, horseback riding, rappelling, zip-lining, and my favorite, white water rafting. The rafting was on class 2, 3, and 4 rapids on the stunning Sarapiqui River, and certainly didn't lack for an adrenaline rush. In fact, our second group got an unexpected scare when two rafts collided after one got wedged between two rocks at the top of a major class 4 rapid, sending 8 students, 2 guides, my co-lead Heather and myself crashing down several hundred feet of whitewater and rocks. It was definitely one of the more terrifying experiences I've had.

Next we headed to the Caribbean town of Tortuguero, where we spent a little over a week participating in a volunteer program on (mainly Green) sea turtle research at the Caribbean Conservation Corporation. To arrive in Tortuguero, we traveled via the winding canals through the rain forest on one of the coolest boat rides I've ever been on, during which we saw crocodiles out sunning themselves on logs.

Tortuguero was nestled in between a large canal and the Atlantic Ocean, with lush rain forest coming right up to the beach. We saw unbelievable wildlife throughout Costa Rica—multiple species each of toucan, parrot, various tropical birds, monkeys, snakes, frogs, lizards, butterflies, insects, and so much more. But the purpose of the trip was to learn about sea turtles (the program was called Sea Turtle Studies), and we certainly saw lots of turtles. Tortuguero is one of the top two beaches for nesting green turtles in the world, and there are over 100,000 nests laid on less then 20 miles of beach each nesting season. Each night in Tortuguero (with one night break), we would divide into groups and patrol the beach for turtles laying their nests. Shifts were from either 8 p.m. until 12:00 midnight or from 12-4 a.m. I'll never forget the experience of my first turtle patrol.

Walking the path through the trees and vegetation (no lights are aloud on the beach; they would scare away the turtles), we suddenly emerge onto the beach. Wind hits our faces, and a full moon illuminates the dark shapes of the trees in the jungle as we begin to walk. We notice distant flashes of lightning from a storm far out at sea, but for now the sky is clear above head. After a few minutes we see something we've never seen before in the sand, a pattern of strange grooves leading out of the water towards the vegetation. The research assistant leading us explains that they are sea turtle tracks, a new sight which will quickly become commonplace to us. We soon notice a second pair of tracks a few feet further down the beach, and are told that this turtle has already laid its nest and gone back to the ocean. A few minutes later we come across another turtle track, but this time we see only one track rather than two. We are amazed at the site of our first green turtle digging a chamber for her eggs. She is ENORMOUS-- the students help measure her and she is over 100cm long, over 3 feet from head to tail! We help take other measurements, during which time we get to go down into the black sand and marvel at the beauty and detail of the turtle close up—the shape of her shell, the patterns of the scutes, the powerful flippers, and what I will remember most, the small black eyes.

I probably saw close to fifty turtles in total while I was in Tortuguero, some coming from the water to build their nest, others going back after finishing, some building their nests, others laying eggs. I remember, on a dark night in the midst of a pouring tropical rain, seeing the wet shell of a turtle walking slowly up the beach, illuminated for a split second by a bolt of lightning. We also learned about the problems of poaching facing both the mothers and their eggs, and I was surprised to know how common of an occurrence it still is.

I shouldn't romanticize the experience too much . Patrols were tiring and difficult-- walking on sand is much harder than solid land-- and often through either the sticky tropical heat or pouring rain, and on multiple occasions through thunder and offshore lightning. Some nights we walked for 4 hours without seeing one turtle, while other times we'd run into groups of over a hundred other tourists on “turtle tours” watching a single mother laying eggs. There were mosquitos and sandflies. On nights when it was cloudy or the moon wasn't out it would be nearly pitch black and we'd trip and fall repeatedly in the darkness. The hardest part, however, was definitely the exhaustion of walking hours on end in the middle of the night, step after step, and many times the shifts seemed to drag by endlessly. Nonetheless, it was hard not to feel something special, something primordial, walking on the beach and realizing you are witnessing a process that has been going on and hasn't changed much (apart from the impact humans have had) in hundreds of millions of years.

Our days in Tortuguero, while we normally had mornings to rest, were fairly packed as well. The students had lectures on sea turtle biology and ecology every day, as well as written assignments and two exams. I organized community service events at the local high school and daycare center, and I greatly enjoyed (as I always do) the opportunity to play with and interact with a group of young kids. In addition to being a lot of fun, it's an experience which always reminds me of how similar people are.

From Tortuguero, we took an incredible flight on a small propeller plane to Drake Bay on the Osa peninsula on the southern Pacific coast, where we spent our third and last week of the trip. We took boat rides every day along one of the best stretches of rain forest on the entire pacific coast to visit Corcovado National Park and Cano Island, among other places. We got to go kayaking with crocodiles and snorkeling with sharks (or, to be more accurate, one small white tipped reef shark). While we didn't see any more nesting turtles, we did see more unbelievable wildlife. Corcovado has the country's largest population of scarlet macaws, and I'll never forget the unique way they fly overheard through the trees. We saw lots of howler monkeys, and could hear their unmistakable King-Kong like call through the trees from far away.

The most incredible part of Drake Bay, however, was its marine life, particularly its marine mammals. We saw different species of dolphins in enormous schools, including the pan tropical spotted dolphin numerous times. They would surf on the wake from our boat and breach the surface of the water, leaping into the air to heights several times the length of their body. We saw humpback whales breaking the surface simultaneously in pairs, huge schools of fish while snorkeling, a mammoth manta ray leaping out of the water, and a pair of ridley turtles mating in the open ocean. For me, the most unforgettable experience was seeing a school of at least a dozen breaching pseudo-orcas, commonly known as “fake killer whales”. These rare animals are not regularly seen anywhere in the world, and look like a cross between a dolphin and killer whale. They were also jumping out of the water like dolphins, but were much, much bigger. I got a few incredible pictures, but for each photo I managed to get there were countless images I could only capture in my mind. Like turtle patrols, I shouldn't glamorize the boat rides, as they were often long and uncomfortable, often overshadowed by sea sickness for a few students.

Back in San Jose, we got to see a bit of the city and had our final lunch and dinner at two unforgettable local cafes near our hotel in Alajuela. In total the trip was 20 days, and I did it twice with two seperate groups (the above experience are an amalgamation between the two trips)

Despite all the amazing things we saw and experienced, it was definitely the hardest summer I've had leading trips. I believe the main reason is that since I wasn't familiar with the academic content of the course (students were actually able to receive high school or even college credit for the trip), it was hard for me to connect with the groups. Working with groups of young, mainly females from very privileged backgrounds was difficult, although I've been more successful in the trips I led in previous years in South America, I believe because I knew more about the academic content of those programs. Honestly, by the end of second trip I was really ready to be done, but now that it's been over a month I'm able to look back and remember mainly the good experiences and amazing things I got to do.

The morning after sending home my second group, I headed to downtown San Jose to catch a bus to Panama. After making my way to the correct bus stop (the side of a not so obvious street) and discovering the bus left in twenty minutes, I had a frantic rush of trying to return my employer's rented cell phone and find a working ATM. I ran the whole way, looking ridiculous lugging my enormous blue backpack, and made it back to the bus stop with less than 3 minutes to spare, and hopped onto the bus completely out of breath. During the 7 hour bus ride I met a cool Argentine American girl who had done the Peace Corps in the South Pacific, and a family with two teenage sons from San Diego that were going to stay with some missionaries on an island near Bocas Del Toro, Panama, the same place I was heading to.

Bocas del Toro is an archipelago of islands off Panama's northern Caribbean coast, and is Panama's tourism Mecca, with surfing, diving, beautiful beaches and private islands. My idea was to see if I could find temporary work as a divemaster at a dive shop there, like I did back in April in Utila, Honduras. I didn't have my dive gear, however, and only had about a week before I had to go back to fly home from Costa Rica, so I wasn't expecting too much. Nonetheless, I was in luck at the very first diveshop I went to. I introduced myself to John, the friendly American owner, who empathized with my situation (said he'd been there himself), and agreed to let me dive for free in exchange for helping out with a few things such as getting people suited up and bringing a few flyers around town to hotels. Nothing too intense. I got to dive every day for about a week and in the process explore some of the beautiful islands and beaches in the area. Certain aspects reminded me of my time in the Philippines, such as the mangroves and the maze of islands, but I have to admit that the Philippines was more beautiful both above and below the water.

One afternoon after returning from a day of diving I realized I had the phone number of the Phillips', the family I met on the bus from Costa Rica, but hadn't called them yet. I went to the pay phone next to the dive shop and dialed the number. I was invited to go visit them for dinner and to stay over that very night! There was only one catch. The missionary family they were staying with lived on another island, and a boat taxi would be quite expensive. By pure coincidence, they had gone to town by boat for a visit, and were less than a block away, but were just getting ready to leave when I called. They had no plans of going back to town anytime in the next several days. I ran back to my hostel, quickly crammed everything into my backpack, settled my bill, and ran to meet the boat. I grinned the entire beautiful boat ride, passing several tiny islands along the way.

I spent the next two days with the Phillips' and their hosts, the Kapsars, a family from Ohio who have spent the last few years establishing themselves in Panama. They were such generous, welcoming people, I greatly enjoyed getting to know both families. Their house was on the hillside overlooking the islands, and was, to my surprise, very American, or at least Americanized by its occupants. I especially enjoyed sitting down to meals with everyone around the large kitchen table. It reminded me spending time with my own family, something I have not had much of recently. I even got to attend a baby shower for a friend at their house, where I had a great time making balloon animals for all the kids and laughing at the complete randomness of it all.

After a week and a half in Bocas, I headed back to Costa Rica and flew back to the U.S. To North Carolina, where I spent a few days doing paperwork and reports for the trips I'd led. Dora, my co-lead from last summer in Peru who is still a good friend, invited me for a wonderful weekend at her beach house on the shore. I was also invited to a Jack Johnson concert the following Tuesday. Unfortunately, my flight home was on Monday and it was going to cost $150 to change the flight, but through a stroke of luck there were torrential storms at Newark airport the morning of my flight. After sitting an hour on the plane at the gate, we were de-boarded. While the rest of the passengers seemed ready to lynch the people at the Contiental airlines desk, I couldn't suppress a smile while changing my flight for Wednesday morning, and had an awesome time at the concert the following night!

I spent a few days at my dad's house, then went to visit my grandmother, aunts, uncle and cousins renting a house on Fire Island for the weekend, then headed for a few days to my mom's house before flying out to Colorado last weekend.

It's been nice being back here, where the most stable life I've had has been for the past few years. I'm back working temporarily at my old preschool, and seeing the same kids, having them remember me and seeing them grow up before my eyes (kids grow a lot in three years!) gives me a sense of continuity in my otherwise presently disjointed life.

I'm planning to stay here another week or two and am still considering my options for the fall, but will hopefully be traveling through Southeast Asia with my good friend Aaron from here in Steamboat. My current idea is to spend a month working as a dive master somewhere before meeting up in Bangkok, Thailand with Aaron in October, then traveling through Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. If all goes according to plan, I'll head back here to Colorado in December, then begin the Peace Corps early next year.

2008-06-16T20:09:00.000-07:00

After 6 rather rushed days back at home doing the rounds of family visits I headed down to North Carolina for another fun round of Broadreach Staff Training. I spent 10 days going over the logistics of the Sea Turtles Studies program I´m about to lead in Costa Rica, Broadreach rituals, risk management, etc etc. The highlight of staff training is always meeting all kinds of incredible, inspiring people from all over the world, and this year was no exception-- I made lots of great new friends and got lots of information and new ideas for future adventures.

From there I headed down to Costa Rica with about 10 days to explore on my own before my group arrived. After a night in Alajuela, a suburb of San Jose (C.R.´s capital city) with fellow Broadreach co-leads Lucy and Kate, we hopped on a bus to La Fortuna, where we did an incredible night tour of Volcan Areneal, Central America´s most active volcano. After a refreshing dip in some hot springs (some pretty bootleg ones right underneath a bridge--the water was the runoff from the really expensive developed ones upstream a few hundred feet, but they were free!) we headed to the volcano. We were worried that the cone had been cloudy all afternoon and that we wouldn´t get to see anything, but we were in luck! As we approached in our ridiculously overcrowded 4x4, the clouds began to clear. I noticed the glow of orange in the distance, and as we approached the lava flow began to show more clearly. It was really unbelievable-- A steady stream of lava just flowing down the side of the volcano as casually as water flowing down a mountain stream. We stopped and got out at a viewpoint about 1-2 miles away, and could see enormous boulders falling down the slope like embers in a fire place. If you listened very closely you could just hear the crackling and churning. At one point there was a larger explosion of rock, lava and smoke, and after a few seconds delay an enormous BOOOM. The only disappointment for the night was our inability to photograph the incredible sight--what to our eye appeared so spectacular and vivid translated on camera merely to an impossibly tiny, barely distinguishable faint orange glow.

The following morning I parted ways with Lucy and Kate and hopped on a bus North. Many hours and about 4 buses later I arrived at the Nicaraguan border in the late afternoon. After crossing the border, I decided on principle to not get in a taxi with any of the guys that seemed to swarm around my like flies, despite having no guidebook or any real information of how to get where I was going, or, for that matter, any definite idea of where I was going. I hopped on a bus going north towards Managua--a really awesome vintage 70s recycled American schoolbus. Within a few minutes I looked out the window and saw a big brown expanse which I though at first was a field, but then realized was Lake Nicaragua, the 5th largest freshwater lake in the world. I ended up spending the night in a small town called Rivas not far from the border. I met up eiyh a Dutch girl named Nicole in an internet cafe and we decided to travel to Olmetepe Island together the next morning.

We took a short taxi ride to the San Jorge ferry dock on Lake Nicaragua and got on the first boat of the morning. The boat ride was simply amazing! Lake Nicaragua is apparently the only lake in the world with freshwater sharks (bullsharks to be exact) but despite our best efforts we couldn´t spot any. We could, however, see the two massive cones of the island´s 2 volcanos -Concepcion and Maderas- rising in front of us as we approached! At the risk of sounding a bit vulgar, the best description of what the volcanos look like is two enormous breasts rising up out of the water.

OK I´m getting sleepy so I´m going to speed write the rest. We made our way to a beautiful hotel on a quiet beach called Charco Verde on the lake and talked our way into getting a nice private room for only $20 a night. We walked around the area, checked out this green lagoon, saw all sorts of birds and other animals, and killer views of the lake and volcanos from above the cliffs. The next day we rented a motorcycle--I had an interesting time riding it since I´d never ridden a full sized, completely manual bike before, but I eventually got the hang of it. We went to a waterful--had quite an adventure getting there on this windy dirt-rock road, but made it and it was well worth the effort. Visited some petroglyphs after and had lunch at the beach (tons of sandflies, awesome rainbow after rainstorm) and went swimming in a crystal clear water hole surrounded by enormous tropical trees. On the way back I got the bike up to 90 km/hr on the main road--partly for me, and partly to impress Nicole (she seemed impressed I think). It was an unforgetable day.

The next morning we hung out on the beach and took the ferry back in the afternoon, the mhopped on a bus to Granada, an old colonial city which is the second largest in Nicaragua. I spent 3 nights at a cool, chill hostel called the Bearded Monkey, pretty much being lazy--hanging out and meeting other travelers, lounging on the hammocks, and taking advantage of the yummy food and dangerous happy hour (¨Nica libres¨--double rum and cokes--for $1). I got sick one day but not too bad, and also spent a day being even lazier on a day trip to the Laguna de Apoyo, a spectacular volcanic crater lake 20 minutes from Granada.

I took another painfully long, painfully uncomfortable (standing most of the time) series of bus rides back to San Jose yesterday, and have spent today preparing for the arrival of my first group tomorrow. I´m getting excited, and am actually getting worried that I´m not feeling more worried by this point, as I´m usually very nervous before beginning a long group trip like this (does that make any sense?) I should probably get some rest (since I´ll be getting very little from here on out) so I´ll finish here. Oh one other thing--if you want to read updates and see pics from my trip in Costa Rica you can click the following link, which we´ll update as much as possible throughout the summer: http://www.academictreks.com/whatsup/update.asp?id=7456

2008-05-27T11:04:00.000-07:00

I arrived back from Honduras less than a week ago and just now finished (re)packing my bags after the last 6 days of visiting with family in New Jersey and Connecticut. The last week seems like a whirlwind of memorial day barbeques, graduations, and driving back and forth—not quite the routine period of vegging out I normally have between trips, but I guess I didn't have much time to get bored. I'm headed down to Raleigh, North Carolina tomorrow morning for 10 days of Broadreach staff training for the trips I'll be leading in Costa Rica the next two months. I'll be leading a workshop or two, mentoring new staff, and of course seeing my old BR friends—Dora, Erin, Tatiana, and many more, all of which I'm really looking forward to despite the 12 hour + work days. I'm flying down to San Jose, Costa Rica on June 7^th. I'll have over a week to travel on my own before the first group arrives, and am hoping to get to travel to either Nicaragua or Panama during that time.

The remainder of my time in Honduras was excellent, except for one unfortunate incident. I was in bed in my apartment when two guys broke in and stole my backpack. Miraculously, I actually was awake when it happened and saw the guys in the living room through the door, which was halfway open. Half asleep and not quite sure what to do, I jumped out of bed and started shouting at the top of my lungs (I didn't really want to surprise or corner them). The guys bolted, and with the adrenaline rush I ended up chasing them halfway down the street with no shoes and only my underwear on, screaming bloody murder the whole way! I normally keep lots of valuables in that backpack (camera, wallet, sunglasses, etc etc) but in another extraordinary coincidence, the only thing of any value in it at the time was my MP3 player, as well as a lot of my personal things (dive log, book, sunblock). The most surprising thing of all, however, is that somehow the backpack ended up on my back door two days later with everything in tact except the MP3 player. There were lots of suspicious circumstances surrounding the whole event, I'm really relieved to only be down an MP3 player, but it kind of left a bad taste in my mouth and I wish I could know the whole story...

My dad and stepmother came down to visit for my last week in Utila. I had a nice time diving with them and actually got to lead them on every dive. It was great to be able to share a small slice of my lifestyle with my family, if only for a few days. We didn't see any more whale sharks (in the end I only saw that one with Angie) but did see more dolphins, and lots of other awesome sea creatures. They were only planning to dive 3 days initially, but in the end decided to dive all 4 days they were in Utila, and we got in 8 varied dives which were all really wonderful. On the last day we did two killer north side dives—Blackish point, which has awesome walls and overhangs, and Duppy waters, one of the best dives on the island. I'll never forget swimming along the sand channel when it narrows, then opens up and drops off to a vertical wall into the blue ocean. After the dive we continued all the way around the island and had lunch on Pigeon Cay.

From Utila we rented a car and drove across the country to the border with Guatemala and El Salvador where we visited the ancient Mayan ruins of Copan. It was a beautiful drive and we stopped in a few small towns on the way. The ruins themselves were quite impressive, complete with pyramids, tunnels, statues, and brightly colored Macaw parrots and cashew trees. We drove to the Guatemalan border and they let us cross in a few hundred feet on foot—we didn't get our passports stamped (just as well since mine is almost out of space and I'll probably need every page for the next few months), I'm still deciding if I'll claim Guatemala as a country I've been to (I don't think it counts) Nonetheless, in the end were all very satisfied after a great trip!