tales from the trekking world (of good people and places):
we have returned to xela from our long distance trekking adventure to the highest peak in central america. oy... i am a bit sore, unfortunately, and i am sad to report that i only made it to 100 m. before the top of the tallest peak in central america (although we checked and i still made it to the highest point in central america), but the weather was horrible and my body was a strange temp, and so i felt like i was going to pass out - perhaps altitude, i don´t know. anyway, i don´t feel too terrible about it, as there were no views from the top. only frigid wind.
good, great things about the trekking company. their name is quetzal trekkers. they are the only non profit trekking agency in xela. all of their money - 100% - goes to a school, a group home and a hospital, all cheap or free, for impoverished kids in xela. the guides also spend 3 or 4 hours with the kids twice a week, building relationships. very cool. so, peak reached or no, our money went to a good cause.
but most importantly, we met some interesting folks along the way: first, was an israeli guy named gill. interesting just because he was pretty patriotic, but really nice, and spent a lot of time with us, despite the fact that our views on israel are incredibly different.
the other was a girl named naomi who is probably about 26. she and i have an uncanny number of things in common. first, that her folks adopted an eight year old boy from columbia when she was 9. they went through a lot of the same troubles we´ve had with aidar, culminating in a really tough adolescence. the good news is, as he grew older (he´s now my age), he has matured into a really interesting, interested person who is doing a lot of neat things. second, she is a jewish woman who is dating a palestinian christian guy who is from ramullah. his parents worked with rick and kitty ufford-chase to establish the christian peacemaker team project in hebron, which we visited while we were there. his brother - eric - works in jerusalem for a group called seeds of peace. and, lastly, she works in el paso-juarez for a borderlinks-type organization, leading groups of students into mexico for semesters at a time. really, really cool. she has done the whole tucson circuit, and we know a bunch of the same people. very fun - very crazy - very cool.
anyway, naomi and i have concocted a plan for my return to the states: i guess you can fly into juarez from mexico city for about 100 dollars. we´ll do the juarez tour (of folk art, specifically), and then drive over to tucson and nogales where i can show her around for a few days, and i´ll head home from there-probably fly into spokane again, which is only $100, around may 18th ish..ish. we´ll see how money goes, and whether i get into school, but i guess juarez has a really interesting folk art movement going on around border stuff, and it would be a great place to start developing a research project. anyway, good connection, eh?? kind of unbelievable.
after trekking, we meandered over to lago atitlan for a second time, watched a gorgeous sunset over the lake, then proceeded to san pedro, on the opposite end of the lake from panahachel (the city where we´d stayed before). we shared a hookah and drank a few beers while listening to a BLUES band (who were fabulous)...this lasted until we realized that san pedro is basically disney land for drugged out gringos, and we retired to bed shortly thereafter.
departed in the morn for livingston (no, not montana. har har), a really interesting town on the east coast of the country. we stayed over in rio dulce, a little town on the water...on the rio dulce, in fact... on the way into livingston. we arrived in livingston the next day via boat tour, where we had the chance to swim in a hot spring.
livingston was a really amazing town. we took a tour through a group called "exotic travel" which was very eye opening. we walked from town through the jungle, learning about the plantlife as we went, down river in a canoe, and up to "siete altares," a park with 7 waterfalls. our tour guide was a native livingstonian. so, some cool things about livingston:
-populated by the garifono people; descendents of a shipwrecked slave ship from africa who built their civilization in between these inlets.
-the language there is some mix of french, spanish, english, quiche and swahili. garifono.
-there are no roads leading into livingston. the government wanted to put one in in the 1990s, but the people said "no thansk." thus, it is only accessible by boat. this means the community has a unique cosmology and community environment. really, it is a place unlike anywhere else on earth.
-there are basically no exports from livingston. the community, and its tourist industry, sustain its markets. imports are limited.
and so on.
basically: visit livingston. julie lauterbach wrote a fab poem about our guide, pablo, and julie, if you read this, perhaps post it, if you feel so inclined.
a funny highlight from our livingston trip is that we ran into cari and brian while eating dinner the first night! so, we hung out with them for the weekend. we had some good - great laughs.
en route back to xela, we stopped off again in rio dulce...where i caught some sort of annoying cold, which i´m nearly over now...then, i departed from eric and julie (tear) and made my way to antigua for a night of sneezing, and back to xela...welcome home!
yeah. i don´t joke. it´s good to be back "home," back in class, with my host family, and among friendly and familiar faces at ica.
more when there´s more...
adios.
martes, 29 de enero de 2008
lunes, 28 de enero de 2008
three weeks in: week two.
t has been quite QUITE a trip so far. I guess, as of today, I have been in xela for 2 weeks...and i'm not sure if it feels like more or less. the first few days, i was here with cari and brian, and after about 4 days, eric headed down here. cari y brian, then, took off about a week ago, so it's been eric and me this week. julie will join us tomorrow, and we are going to go hiking to the highest point in central america (and i will die a painful death...) and then head over to the eastern side of guatemala and up into belize for about a week before i return to xela for two more weeks.
xela is REALLY beautiful. it took me awhile to warm up to it entirely, but as we've hung around, it's really a town that has all kinds of nooks and cranies - plus a majority (yes) indigenous population - 90% or so in this area. it's surrounded on all sides by mountains and volcanos, so there are all kinds of neat things - hot springs, lakes, etc... - around to do and see of varying levels of touristyness.
the school, too, is awesome. most people stick around for 1-6 weeks, so, at this point, we know some of the folks here pretty well. they´re from all over the place, and we´ve encountered some pretty interesting folks. there´s a group here from a lutheran seminary..one of whom tore a tendon playing soccer and has been on bedrest, oy... and a mormon couple; 2 eighteen year olds from holland who are hells awesome and love to sing, a guy who spends most of his time guiding tours in alaska, and - most interestingly - a russian jewish immigrant who lives in philly, but who would like (for spiritual reasons) to move to israel... we got into it last night, which was NOT pretty (although i kept my cool very well, and we´re still speaking, so...). anyway, it´s a hodge podge of folks - those, among others, who have become our posse these weeks.
days are basically like this: i´m with a host family, who is AMAZING and you would love. so, we eat breakfast together (and i´m staying with another student, too, named sarah), then head to school about 8. from 8-1, we have one-on-one class with a maestro or maestra, where we go over vocab and grammar, but also discuss all kinds of political, cultural and social things. it´s been really interesting, learning about the war here which sparked the mass migration during sanctuary - the stories are horrifying. we talked a lot about some of the methods of torture both parties used on the people around - cutting open pregnant women and strangling the fetus with its umbilical cord while the mom bled to death, etc... Awful, awful
the day before yesterday, a new president was instated, so folks have been very forthcoming about their opinions on the matter. it has been pretty intense. anyway, it has just been such an amazing opportunity. i feel that, in the past two weeks, i´ve encountered about a semester´s worth of spanish. i can´t really use a lot of it yet when talking - i have learned five tenses this week, for example, and they´re still confusing - but my comprehension has sky rocketed. i can read the paper, for example, and only need to look up 10 or so words in a given article. so, i must say that it´s been a fantastic experience, so far, and i look forward to having another two weeks to continue this process.
afternoons and weekends, we have opportunities to volunteer and go to culturally significant places, etc... last week, we visited and painted a women´s prison, for example, so we learned how the penal system is different from ours (guilty until proven innocent, here. the prison we were at is basically just a holding cell for people awaiting trial...). over the weekend, we did some touristy stuff - traveled over to a lake which is surrounded by volcanos, did some swimming and such, which was really fun and helped us get to know folks around here. we then headed to chichicastenango which is a VERY obnoxiously touristy market town...oy. but, this week has been fantastic. monday, we went to a finca, or coffee plantation, where we saw basically the whole pre-roasting process. it wasn´t a cooperative, and it was pretty destitute. the owner of our school, enrique (who eric likes to call eric...), does all the narration on all our tours, and he called the coffee business "an open vein of guatemala." pretty poignant. but, he said the situation on the cooperatives is much MUCH better, so keep up the fair tradeing!
yesterday, we planted trees at a reforestation project, which was also very, very fun; today, we heard from an ex-military combatant. his story was horrifying - he joined the resistance movement when he was 12, after the military killed nearly his entire family. He lived on top of Tajumulco (the highest mountain in Central America) for four years, or so, working as the popular voice of the resistance on the radio show. he saw, did, experienced some pretty horrible things over the years, and has some interesting insights on the civil war, the current economic and political situation in guate, etc... one of the best insights he brought up was that these horrors and this warring is not a Guatemalan issue - it´s a human issue. and we need to learn to quit these things. needless to say, it´s been very informative, and a great experience.
We also celebrated Eric´s birthday with a bunch of folks from here, along with some Whitworthians who are studying in town with the Central American Study Tour. We had a nice evening of Indian food and beer. Anyway, we´re having a fantastic, informative time around these parts. Wish you all were here to enjoy it with us.
xela is REALLY beautiful. it took me awhile to warm up to it entirely, but as we've hung around, it's really a town that has all kinds of nooks and cranies - plus a majority (yes) indigenous population - 90% or so in this area. it's surrounded on all sides by mountains and volcanos, so there are all kinds of neat things - hot springs, lakes, etc... - around to do and see of varying levels of touristyness.
the school, too, is awesome. most people stick around for 1-6 weeks, so, at this point, we know some of the folks here pretty well. they´re from all over the place, and we´ve encountered some pretty interesting folks. there´s a group here from a lutheran seminary..one of whom tore a tendon playing soccer and has been on bedrest, oy... and a mormon couple; 2 eighteen year olds from holland who are hells awesome and love to sing, a guy who spends most of his time guiding tours in alaska, and - most interestingly - a russian jewish immigrant who lives in philly, but who would like (for spiritual reasons) to move to israel... we got into it last night, which was NOT pretty (although i kept my cool very well, and we´re still speaking, so...). anyway, it´s a hodge podge of folks - those, among others, who have become our posse these weeks.
days are basically like this: i´m with a host family, who is AMAZING and you would love. so, we eat breakfast together (and i´m staying with another student, too, named sarah), then head to school about 8. from 8-1, we have one-on-one class with a maestro or maestra, where we go over vocab and grammar, but also discuss all kinds of political, cultural and social things. it´s been really interesting, learning about the war here which sparked the mass migration during sanctuary - the stories are horrifying. we talked a lot about some of the methods of torture both parties used on the people around - cutting open pregnant women and strangling the fetus with its umbilical cord while the mom bled to death, etc... Awful, awful
the day before yesterday, a new president was instated, so folks have been very forthcoming about their opinions on the matter. it has been pretty intense. anyway, it has just been such an amazing opportunity. i feel that, in the past two weeks, i´ve encountered about a semester´s worth of spanish. i can´t really use a lot of it yet when talking - i have learned five tenses this week, for example, and they´re still confusing - but my comprehension has sky rocketed. i can read the paper, for example, and only need to look up 10 or so words in a given article. so, i must say that it´s been a fantastic experience, so far, and i look forward to having another two weeks to continue this process.
afternoons and weekends, we have opportunities to volunteer and go to culturally significant places, etc... last week, we visited and painted a women´s prison, for example, so we learned how the penal system is different from ours (guilty until proven innocent, here. the prison we were at is basically just a holding cell for people awaiting trial...). over the weekend, we did some touristy stuff - traveled over to a lake which is surrounded by volcanos, did some swimming and such, which was really fun and helped us get to know folks around here. we then headed to chichicastenango which is a VERY obnoxiously touristy market town...oy. but, this week has been fantastic. monday, we went to a finca, or coffee plantation, where we saw basically the whole pre-roasting process. it wasn´t a cooperative, and it was pretty destitute. the owner of our school, enrique (who eric likes to call eric...), does all the narration on all our tours, and he called the coffee business "an open vein of guatemala." pretty poignant. but, he said the situation on the cooperatives is much MUCH better, so keep up the fair tradeing!
yesterday, we planted trees at a reforestation project, which was also very, very fun; today, we heard from an ex-military combatant. his story was horrifying - he joined the resistance movement when he was 12, after the military killed nearly his entire family. He lived on top of Tajumulco (the highest mountain in Central America) for four years, or so, working as the popular voice of the resistance on the radio show. he saw, did, experienced some pretty horrible things over the years, and has some interesting insights on the civil war, the current economic and political situation in guate, etc... one of the best insights he brought up was that these horrors and this warring is not a Guatemalan issue - it´s a human issue. and we need to learn to quit these things. needless to say, it´s been very informative, and a great experience.
We also celebrated Eric´s birthday with a bunch of folks from here, along with some Whitworthians who are studying in town with the Central American Study Tour. We had a nice evening of Indian food and beer. Anyway, we´re having a fantastic, informative time around these parts. Wish you all were here to enjoy it with us.
three weeks in: week one.
Blogging...evidentally not my strong point. So, here we are. I offer you three installations to attempt to recount my experiences so far! They´re cut and pasted from emails sent during these weeks. Enjoy!
Week One-
We are doing very well here in Guatemala. Our host family is absolutely awesome. They spend a lot of time talking with us every day, and they´ve got a lot of good insights about culture, what to do in town, etc..., which is awesome. The school pays for pretty much all our time. In the morning, we have one on one instruction from 8 til 1. They provide unlimited tea and coffee and a snack break around ten. On friday, I learned 45 new vocab words, so I think it´s going to be a great experience. Then, we can take advantage of daily trips, cultural events, dance lessons and movies which take place in the afternoon. Our family provides three meals a day, which have been excellent. They´re not totally vegetarian, but mostly they´ve been great. Their daughter (17 years old and in medical school - smart one!!) is also vegetarian, so they have an easy time cooking for us. Their son is 14 and is already studying toward his profession, as well. He wants to be an electrical engineer. Our family hosts around 15 students per year. They come from all around the world, and we´ve met people here from all over - Germany, Japan, Israel, Canada, among others. Some stay for months, so they basically have someone here all the time...they have some pretty crazy stories. I guess a lot of families in these language school cities build extra space onto their homes so they can take visitors all the time. I imagine it´s pretty lucrative. Anyway, I think they like us a lot because we´re pretty boring. We spend most of our free time, when not exploring the city, reading our books, at this point.
Brian - my cousin Cari´s boyfriend - is staying at a hostel for backpackers called Casa Argentina, and it has a trekking agency on the first floor. He´s met all kinds of interesting people, including some crazy botanists from U Texas. He´s a great person to travel with - his spanish is awesome, plus he´s just fun.
Saturday, on Brian´s suggestion, we headed into the mountains to a hot spring called Fuentes Georginas. It was basically just a big natural hot spring, all outdoors, with a bunch of pools. We swam, sat on the rocks, ate lunch... had a very relaxing afternoon. We left here around 10 and returned around 4. Very fun. It was absolutely beautiful. This is a pretty incredible country. There are indigenous people everywhere, and the aesthetic is just beautiful. I guess the indigenous groups have a lot of problems with health, infant mortality and lack of education, but the culture here appears to be very rich and affirming of the livlihood of the indigenous. Many of them, though they spend most of their week in Xela, barely speak spanish. Very interesting. Also, the scenery is amazing. Xela is surrounded on all sides by volcanos and mountains which just seem to shoot out of the ground. It looks like rainforest, with greenery blanketing everything. Since it´s so fertile, people farm right on these STEEP hills. I can´t imagine - not terraced, or anything. But, very beautiful. We saw a lot of that on the way to the Fuentes.
Well, I guess that´s all! It´s been pretty exciting already!! Also, I think the most important item I have with me is my down coat!!!! It´s really, really cold here, especially at night. It got down to around 30 degrees the other night, and we don´t have heat in our part of the house. Oy.
Week One-
We are doing very well here in Guatemala. Our host family is absolutely awesome. They spend a lot of time talking with us every day, and they´ve got a lot of good insights about culture, what to do in town, etc..., which is awesome. The school pays for pretty much all our time. In the morning, we have one on one instruction from 8 til 1. They provide unlimited tea and coffee and a snack break around ten. On friday, I learned 45 new vocab words, so I think it´s going to be a great experience. Then, we can take advantage of daily trips, cultural events, dance lessons and movies which take place in the afternoon. Our family provides three meals a day, which have been excellent. They´re not totally vegetarian, but mostly they´ve been great. Their daughter (17 years old and in medical school - smart one!!) is also vegetarian, so they have an easy time cooking for us. Their son is 14 and is already studying toward his profession, as well. He wants to be an electrical engineer. Our family hosts around 15 students per year. They come from all around the world, and we´ve met people here from all over - Germany, Japan, Israel, Canada, among others. Some stay for months, so they basically have someone here all the time...they have some pretty crazy stories. I guess a lot of families in these language school cities build extra space onto their homes so they can take visitors all the time. I imagine it´s pretty lucrative. Anyway, I think they like us a lot because we´re pretty boring. We spend most of our free time, when not exploring the city, reading our books, at this point.
Brian - my cousin Cari´s boyfriend - is staying at a hostel for backpackers called Casa Argentina, and it has a trekking agency on the first floor. He´s met all kinds of interesting people, including some crazy botanists from U Texas. He´s a great person to travel with - his spanish is awesome, plus he´s just fun.
Saturday, on Brian´s suggestion, we headed into the mountains to a hot spring called Fuentes Georginas. It was basically just a big natural hot spring, all outdoors, with a bunch of pools. We swam, sat on the rocks, ate lunch... had a very relaxing afternoon. We left here around 10 and returned around 4. Very fun. It was absolutely beautiful. This is a pretty incredible country. There are indigenous people everywhere, and the aesthetic is just beautiful. I guess the indigenous groups have a lot of problems with health, infant mortality and lack of education, but the culture here appears to be very rich and affirming of the livlihood of the indigenous. Many of them, though they spend most of their week in Xela, barely speak spanish. Very interesting. Also, the scenery is amazing. Xela is surrounded on all sides by volcanos and mountains which just seem to shoot out of the ground. It looks like rainforest, with greenery blanketing everything. Since it´s so fertile, people farm right on these STEEP hills. I can´t imagine - not terraced, or anything. But, very beautiful. We saw a lot of that on the way to the Fuentes.
Well, I guess that´s all! It´s been pretty exciting already!! Also, I think the most important item I have with me is my down coat!!!! It´s really, really cold here, especially at night. It got down to around 30 degrees the other night, and we don´t have heat in our part of the house. Oy.
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