Playa!

Rachel and I got back yesterday from the beach to cold and no electricity.  Why didn't I get an internship at the beach? It was wonderful, hot and sunny but with a wonderful breeze. Early Saturday morning Lupe, Javier, Laurel, Rachel, Karen, Liam and I went to the beach. The minute we left the mountains the weather became paradise. We went to a little beach town called Champi...something. I'll have to ask becuase the whole time I was there I kept calling it the wrong name. It was a tiny town with grass huts on the beach with restaurants.  There were people riding horses and selling whole coconuts on the beach, which was black sand.  I learned to eat whole shrimp, eyes, brain and all.  They're kind of like softshell crabs, but better. Liam and Rachel and I stayed after everyone left at four to get in more beach time, which was a great plan.  We got a nice little hotel with a tv (tv!!! I watched House in Spanish and understood virtually nothing but it was still exciting) and sat on the pier watching the sunset with a bunch of local surfers. I was pretty exited to be able to talk all afternoon in Spanish without looking like an idiot (I think).  After that we got dinner.  All the restaurants were people's houses with tables outside. You ordered food and they went in the kitchen to make it. I had a whole fried fish, which was delicious with salt and lime and homemade picante sauce. In the middle of dinner a huge windstorm came up and we had to move the table inside. We wanted to explore a little but ended up eating fruit in bed and going to sleep at like nine. Rachel and I woke up at five thirty and walked out on the pier with the fishermen to watch the sunrise, then took a nap in hammocks on the pier. The pier was huge and really tall, made of rusty iron and thick planks of wood stapled together, and every time a huge wave came in the whole thing groaned and shook.  The waves were big and powerful - I got tossed around more than I swam, but the water was so warm I couldn't resist paddling around.  Then we ate breakfast on the beach and took a bus back at nine to try to get back to go to Antigua with Laurel to see her off. First the bus went to Reu, where had to ride in the back of a little bike cart to the main terminal to catch the bus back to Xela. I read a book the whole time and Liam slept, but poor Rachel who was burned to a crisp got stuck in a seat with a woman and her two kids. Keep in mind this is a school bus seat, made for two at the most. Every time I looked up her shoulders were pinched into a space half their normal size and the woman's little girl was climbing all over her. I felt so so bad for her. Sunburns are the worst. Back in xela we took a minibus to Parque Central and the whole time were talking about getting in bed, watching a movie, taking hot showers, etc. But alas, the city had no electricity. So we napped for a few hours, snacked some, then went to bed. I slept like the dead. Now it's back to work.  The camera I bought to replace my nice one that broke when I got here is now dead as well. I really don't want to have to get a new one but I also don't want to travel at the end of this trip and not be able to take pictures of ruins, etc. Also, I have not yet seen disposable cameras here.

Now it's almost lunch time and I really want to go to the market to get rice with milk and a papusa, but it's raining. Papusas are the best thing in the world, kind of a corn pouch filled with cheese and topped with cabbage salad. The arroz con leche is kind of like tapioca, but a drink with cinnamon and sugar. Delicious. However, I shouldn't complain about the weather too much because even two days in the heat, though a welcome change, was too much for me. I got tired of sweating really quickly, especially because away from the water the breeze is negligible and the smells are overpowering. Thank you Xela for being comfortable, even if you are always wet. 

Friday I went to a Salsa competition, which was super super cool. It was like being at So You Think You Can Dance, except I could see how much work it is. The costumes were crazy - my camera already didn't work but when Rachel posts hers I will steal some and put them up. There were these two kids who couldnt have been more than thirteen, with braces and glitter hair gel, who were sooo good. I will never be able to move like that. 

Fragments

OK so I did really well for awhile writing blogs but sometimes it feels like I have so many things to write about getting them down is daunting.  This week I went to Xeabaj to measure the site for the mayan ball court that the school is building. All the kids speak Q'uiche, but the director spoke spanish and told us a lot about the town. It used to be located in the forest in the mountains but Hurrican Stan demolished the town and everyone had to relocate to their current location which is more sheltered. There are very few trees, limited water, but it's safer. Evidently the first level of school is free, through sixth grade, but after that you have to pay and walk about eight kilometers to the bus to get to Xela.  The director told us that when he went to secondaria he had to walk twenty four kilometers to school and since his parents didn't have enough money to help him he worked in the fields every day after school to get enough money to go. He's a really cool guy, he helped organize the rebuilding of five communities in the area that were destroyed in the Hurricane and found foreign aid from all over the world to help. He knew all about every student there.  Besides the Mayan Ball court they want to build a basketball court and a soccer field. I had to measure up and down this fifty degree inclined hill in order to make a plan and it wore me out beyond belief - I was chugging up and down this mountain while little kids were shooting past me giggling. Ugh. At first I was kind of...put off...by the idea that this school is planning on spending so much money on sports.  Isn't there anything else that could use that money? Books? More teachers? Paper?  BUt then the director explained that most of the kids never get a chance to play. He said he never once played a game when he was in school becuase he had to work so hard and was always so tired, and he wants to give the students a chance to be...children.  After he explained it that way I realized that games are something that we take for granted, but they're definitely a luxury.  I saw three tiny little girls playing jacks with walnut shells and a tennis ball. How does something like jacks get passed along? 

Yesterday Kirsten and I went to a school in Cantal called Nueva Amanecer to teach a Mayan arts class.  We brought paint and construction paper and had the kids paint their Nahuals or favorite animals. They had a blast, and took it so seriously. Every kid knew his/her Nahual and what they meant, and we learned more from them about their history than we taught. This school is great, you can tell all the kids are so happy to be there and all the teachers love them so much.  They need so many supplies though, everything from desks and seats to scissors and trash cans. Oh, and paper. Paper is expensive.  I'm thinking of starting a collection at WAAC this fall - architecture students spend small fortunes every week on drawing and modeling supplies, and if every time they spend money they donated a dollar, or bought a dry erase marker, then in a few months I could send down a supply box for the school.  It's so hard not to want to solve every problem myself. I think about all the pairs of scissors and stacks of paper sitting just in the office of my house and it makes me so sad. But this is not a sob story, the school is doing great.  When Kirsten and I walked down the road leading to the school the four and five year olds saw us and a cry went up of "Los gringos! Los gringos!"  and when we walked in the gate they sang this song that goes "Bue-nas Di-as, Pase Adelante! Mucho gusto y come esta usted!!!!"  It was pretty adorable.  When we left I noticed this little girl who couldnt have been more than four sitting outside the gate watching the other kids play. I wish I had taken a picture of her but it seemed like she was so wistful I didn't want to interrupt her moment or seem unfeeling. The whole day really made me nostalgic for elementary school.

This weekend an art center in Xela is teaching a class on the connection between art and math that I really want to go to. But I have a lot of work to do. And i don't know if my vocabulary is advanced enough to keep up. AMA is paying for teachers from all the schools we work with to go to the class. 

Last night Lupe, the woman who runs AMA, Laurel, who is a fashion designer from Richmond designing bags down here to sell at Alternatives, Rachel, the other intern, Karen, a ballerina from richmond who is teaching dance classes in the Mayan schools for a couple of weeks, and I all went to a sulpher sauna on a volcano.  It's literally a hotel perched on top of vents that release sulphuric steam from the magma below.  It felt incredible even though it was almost impossible to breathe it was so hot in the sauna.  We went there after dinner and it was closed but they let us in anyway and I have never slept so soundly as afterwards.  

What else?  Lupe told us a really cool story over dinner the other night. When she was 21, in 1991, in the middle of a civil war, she decided to go work in an orphanage near Tikal during her two weeks vacation from working at a place that approved phone lines.  It was the first time she'd ever been in a plane, and this one only held two people besides the pilot. When they were landing it was in the middle of a thunderstorm and there was a horse on the "landing strip" that wouldnt move, but they had to get out of the lightening.  They ended up hitting the horse with the wing, which was destroyed. The horse was fine. So Lupe was in the jungle, bathing in a river infested with crocodiles, in a place with only one hour of electricity from a generator.  The other volunteer who had come in with her just happened to be a welder, and had just happened to bring his welding supplies to teach the older children a trade so they could go to the city and make money.  In the one hour of electricity every night they got in contact with a World War Two vet in Michigan who knew how to fix their plane.  He gave the welder instructions every night for two weeks and during the day the welder would work on the wing.  After two weeks it was repaired and Lupe went home.  I think that's incredible. 

Ok, back to work, but I will write more later when I remember something interesting. 

Oh, you know that phrase "don't let the bedbugs bite?"  Well, evidently there really are bedbugs.  In my bed, in fact.  Rachel and I are covered with clusters of little red bites and that's the only thing we can think of since we haven't seen any spiders or fleas. Not fun.... 

I stole this from Rachel's Blog

So, after about 4 weeks of living in Guatemala and experiencing all the great things this country has to offer, I have decided someone needs to document their traffic laws. That way any new drivers in Guatemala can have some sort of basis to go off of when learning to drive, and foreign drivers can get accustomed to the cultural differences. 
1. honk to tell other drivers to get out of the way 
2. honk to let pedestrians know you are coming 
3. honk to let other cars know when you are passing them on the shoulder driving on a cliff at 9000 km/hr (we use the metric system here in Guatemala, so you have to learn how to convert from miles - kilometers) 
4. honk to say hello to friends you pass along the road 
5. honk to let cars in front of you know they aren’t driving fast enough 
6. honk when driving through an intersection to let other cars know you are not stopping 
7. honk if you get a sudden burst of emotion you can’t contain, ie a song you like comes on the radio 
8. lanes are for the weak. As are stop signs, speed limits, and guardrails on the sides of mountains. We do not tolerate the weak here in Guatemala. 
9. If you do not hit your head on the ceiling at least 4 times throughout your journey as a result of driving over potholes/boulders/small canyons in the road at extreme speeds, ur doin it wrong. 
I think those are the most basic laws, if you follow those you should fit right in.

Yeah she pretty much nailed the rules. In other news I met a man today names Latino Elvis. Picture a shiny windbreaker covered in playing cards, a bejeweled vest, Elvis hair, and face that looked like it should be hunting jaguars. He told me that when he sings Elvis songs even though he doesn't know what they're saying it makes him feel like his spirit is in another world and humanity's problems mean nothing, and that he cries every time. I love people like that. 

In other news I spent a lot of today buying supplies and cooking with Kirsten for a reception tonight for some grad students (here that means early thirties) who did a study on AMA for their tourism degree. I understood nothing. So boring. And my pineapple upside down cake had to become pineapple upside down cobbler because the brown sugar bubbled up all through the batter and then fell to pieces. i covered it with crushed almonds and pretended it was a southern thing. They bought it.

Tidbits

There are more flies and stray dogs here than people, it feels like. The first couple weeks I woke up continually with flies on my face (ick) and went to sleep every night to the sounds of howling dogs. I killed about a million flies by trapping them behind my curtains and squishing them, then left the bodies as a warning. No more flies on my face. Gruesome? Yes? Coincidence? Probably. I cannot do anything about the dogs but I’ve pretty much stopped hearing them. 
Yesterday I went and met with an architecture student who is the brother of a friend of Kirsten’s. The program to be an architect is eight years but you can tell how much more he knew than any of the fifth years I know (No offense, guys). He has built a number of projects with licensed architects, including taking over the design of a hotel that was started and then abandoned mid construction. Very very cool. My projects here are scattered, and, like much of the work done here, pretty unorganized. At the moment I am helping design a Mayan Ball court and basketball court for a community called Xiabaj. The school’s playground was destroyed by Hurricane Stan and AMA has been raising money to rebuild it. This week I have been going to Spanish schools with fliers Kirsten and I made, giving presentations to schools trying to convince students to spend one day this weekend helping level the land for the playground. We’re offering a class in Q’uiche, the native language, a typical lunch with the community, the opportunity to watch and learn to play the Mayan Ball game, and private transportation. So far, no takers. I’m not sure why, as if I were still a student I would love to see what it was like in a real Mayan community as well as try to give back a little. Most of the schools have field trips to the volcanoes, hot springs, the lake, etc., but all as preplanned tourist packages. We’re going to be working on this for three more weekends but I don’t know how much progress we can make without volunteers. The women in the community have been selling their textiles as a fundraiser but have only managed to raise $500, which is a fortune for them but doesn’t even come close to paying for materials and labors. Though since they normally sell a weaving for under ten dollars, I think it’s pretty impressive what they have accomplished. Reading up on the Mayan Ball game has been fascinating, though. They used rubber balls about the size and weight of bowling balls and bounced them back and forth along courts hundreds of feet long using only their hip bones. If it hit the ground, they lost. Also they had to bounce the balls through hoops the size of basket ball hoops six meters high. FROM THEIR HIPS. Can we say painful? The game is an integral part of the Popul Vuh, which is like their Bible and the Odyssey rolled into one book. Or that’s what I can tell from the struggle I’ve been making trying to read it in Spanish. I’m going to watch a demonstration Friday and I promise to post pictures and updates about it after that.
I think Rachel and I are going to start going to yoga every night (after tacos, obviously). That won’t last long, you say? You’re probably right. Last night we tried to order Chinese food for delivery. Well, we succeeded, but I wish I had a recording to post here. I have never laughed so hard. It was a Chinese person who spoke in Spanish, but then changed to English when he realized we were…not great at Spanish. Keep in mind I was using Skype as a phone and he was in a crowded restaurant. So this guy has a Spanish/Chinese accent and a really effeminate voice, and to everything we ordered he would go “WHHHHAAAAAAAATT?????????? You want WHHHAAATTTTTTT?”
Here is a brief summary. Imagine the above stress on every other word.
Me: “I would like to order General Tso’s Chicken.”
Him : “General chicken? What kind of general chicken?”
Me: General Tso’s? No? What about orange chicken?
Him: You want orange chicken? Why would you want orange chicken? Orange chicken? (to others – they want orange chicken?)
Me: Ok….what kind of chicken do you have?
Him: (to others) She wants to know what kind of chicken we have. What does that mean?
Me: Ok nevermind, what about an egg roll.
Him: You want WHAT? An EGG ROLL? Are you trying to be funny? What is this? Egg roll?

It went about like that for twenty minutes, which mainly took so long because he had to relay every hilarious thing we said to the other people in the store. This continued even after he read us the menu, which was about ten items. Not including lo mein, egg rolls, soup, or really anything but types of meat in oyster sauce. What is oyster sauce? I still don’t know. But it was good and was delivered in about ten minutes on bike. Yum.
Anyway I need to go eat tacos, but I felt like sharing that tidbit. 
More later!

Long (overdue) Update

Okay. So I obviously have been terrible at keeping up with the blog so this is going to be a long one. Bear with me, it’s going to be a little rambling and scattered but I have a lot to explain before I start doing day to day updates.
First off: What am I doing in Guatemala?
I am currently working for two organizations, Highland Support Project and the Asociacion de las Mujeres del Alitplano (AMA). They are sister organizations that together work to support and encourage Mayan communities in and around Xela, especially the women and children. 
A little about these communities: For centuries the Mayan population of Guatemala has been marginalized and displaced, their culture repressed and discriminated against, and the people largely forgotten. Most of the communities I’ve been to speak Quiché or Mam with a scattering of Spanish. Most of the women are married by the time they’re fifteen (or earlier) and have children from the same age. Most of the men are farmers and the average income is 100 American dollars a month. The women are primarily homemakers – the cook over open stoves inside their homes all day, cleaning and taking care of children. Most of the children don’t go to school – there are barely any schools in their native languages and transportation to Spanish schools is hard to come by. The cost of books, uniforms, school supplies is too high for most families and those that can scrape it together mainly send only the boys. Girls don’t need to be educated, as they usually don’t hold jobs. This means that almost all the women are illiterate. 
Last week I went to the first training session of the “Bombero Boys,” a group of eight middle aged men from communities in rural Xela who want to learn to be public safety officials. There are many landslides, hurricanes, earthquakes and floods but no doctors, nurses, firemen, policemen, or ambulances. The communities are hours from the nearest hospital and without vehicles to take patients there even if they were close enough to get there in time for it to be useful. A Bombero is a firefighter, but not in the American sense. Here the police are so reviled that many people refuse to let them help in times of need – it’s pretty dangerous to be a policeman. So the Bomberos are the safe medium – the whole public service system rolled into one organization. The eight men who want to learn to be firefighters only speak Quiché and only two are semi-literate. Marvin is a Bombero who works for AMA part time and is teaching the class. He only speaks Spanish. Tony, who is living here at the AMA house, was a firefighter in the states for fifteen years, and is helping advise the classes. He only speaks English. Because the men have to make a living, they can only meet two days a month. That’s not very much when it comes to learning to save lives, especially with every sentence having to be translated laboriously and without being able to study handouts at night. The day I watched the bomber boys learned the basics – to keep a patient’s neck straight, to bandage a wound with a clean cloth. They have no equipment and no knowledge of the human body (most were shocked to learn the brain controls the appendages) but they want to be able to help and I think that’s pretty awesome.
Back to the women: AMA works primarily with the women in the pueblos. For fifteen years it has been forming women’s circles in communities and to be honest the different between the pueblos AMA has worked with for awhile and those without women’s circles is incredible. The women’s circles are formed to create a unity between the women and teach them to fight for their rights and not accept their standing as second or third hand citizens. Many are single mothers whose husbands have left them or are working in the states, and the circles teach them the importance of education, the basics of health, self esteem, and to be proud of their culture. Guatemala is a society based on machismo, or sexism. For example, the indigenous men wear modern clothing while the women can’t wear pants and always have to wear their traditional garb. Regardless of being Ladina or indigenous, they are not equal to men. But indigenous women have the double curse of being female and Mayan. They are not treated in hospitals, given jobs in the city, and in some cases refused entry to bars and restaurants. They are seen as uneducated, dirty, and stupid by many westernized citizens of Guatemala, those of Spanish descent, called Ladinos. (Latinos is something different, it means Spanish speaking and usually refers to citizens of Central and South America). They are clearly marked by their language, clothing, and names. The Mayan people are losing their history, their art, and their religion to the pressure of money and success in a country that has tried to crush them for years. 
So AMA teaches them to be proud of their history, to teach their children their stories and arts and cooking. Part of AMA is called MAP, or the Mayan Arts Program, and brings art supplies into villages to teach children traditional forms of art so they’re not forgotten. AMA teaches women to organize and take control of their communities. In the pueblos with long standing women’s circles the women have organized clinics, gathered scholarships for girls to go to college and learn to be teachers and nurses who then return to the communities to serve them. They use the money raised from selling textiles and crafts at AMA’s store in Richmond, Alternatives, to build playgrounds and community centers. Xiabaj is one such community, and is in the process of building a basketball court and Mayan ball court for the school that they built. They don’t want their children to forget how to play the traditional game, which has incredible significance in their traditions and religion. 
After the women have participated in the circles they are able to apply for a stove. HSP is in charge of this part – it organized volunteers to come down from the states and donate money for supplies and help build stoves in the homes of the women who are in the circles. Because they cook over open fires inside the homes, breathing issues are a huge problem with women and children. Open fires take a lot of fuel and have to be constantly attended to. The HSP stove are fuel efficient, remove the smoke through a chimney, and cut cooking time in half so the women have more time for themselves and their families. Unfortunately, the stoves are made from pretty expensive materials and take four people a day to build. So the volunteers pay the cost and build the stove. Last week a group of older women from a church in Virginia were down here and build nine stoves. The village women kept remarking that they never knew American women could work with their hands. Surprise. They weren’t being judgmental; they also said they never realized that women in general could build something like this. It’s a whole other world, believe me.
Most houses here are made by the government and are concrete block with corrugated tin roofs. Usually in many pieces, with car doors and hub cabs stuck on to block the holes. Electricity is a maybe, and most running water is in the forms of outdoor sink. Laundry is done in rivers and streams and most of the roads are dirt and stone (and extremely hard to drive over). When it rains – you can’t leave. And believe me, it rains. This has to be one of the wettest places on earth. I feel bad saying that now because it is sunny and beautiful and I don’t want to jinx myself, but I’m just saying. Yesterday I saw the huge towering volcanoes around Xela for the first time because there were no clouds. 
Which leads me to my next point: This is the most beautiful place on earth. The roads wind over and around mountains and so even on a short drive I can see for miles and miles around me. Farms are usually tall narrow strips of land winding up the hills in patchwork patterns. Everything is green and black and blue – it looks like the whole country is a crazy quilt scattered with colorful specks of houses and people. The people here are extraordinarily beautiful as well, not just their clothing but everything about them. Most women in villages that AMA has just started are still scared of westerners, or gringos, and I hate walking around taking pictures because it makes the children hide. They’re not sure if they should smile back, but usually one intrepid little girl will come touch my hair or wave and the rest will realize that I’m just another person. The other day I went to the closing ceremony after the church group finished their stoves. The women were so incredibly grateful, they gave bouquets of lilies wrapped in woven cloths and cooked lunch for everyone. Afterwards they displayed some of their wares for sale and were shocked and delighted that we actually bought things. I bought a long embroidered sash and an apron and the woman who wove the stash asked me (in gestures) if she could show me how to wear it as a head covering. I knelt down in front of her and there was instantly a crowd around us, pointing and laughing (in a nice way) and playing with my hair, touching my face, watching. At first I felt silly and a little bit like the gringa princess who surrounded by handmaidens, but then I realized what it meant to them that I, someone they saw as privileged and worldly, thought what they had made was beautiful. To them their clothing carries their history and stories, but it’s also a symbol of who they are, whether the connotation is good or bad. And they couldn’t believe that I would want to wear their clothing too, that I would want to look like one of them. When I say their clothing carries their history I mean it literally – the patterns tells the stories of creation, the history of the people, the family, and the community. You can look at a woman’s skirt, and if you know what you’re looking at, be able to tell how many children she has. The story of an entire people is hidden in cloth and if the knowledge of weaving disappears so will their history. When the Spanish came they destroyed the glyphs and paintings that had the history so it became solely oral and woven. Hidden in plain sight. Obviously I don’t speak Quiché but I tried as hard as I could to express my gratitude and I was followed out of the houses by a gaggle of giggling children who begged me to take their picture and let them see it. 
Ok more personal stuff: I live in the AMA house, which is kind of a compound of rooms and an office, a kitchen, two bathrooms, etc., centered around two open courtyards. All the corridors are open too so when it gets cold at night the whole place gets cold. Rachel and I live next to each other in the back. Right now I am sitting in the main courtyard trying to keep my body in the sun and the computer screen in the shade. It feels soooo good to be warm. I want to savor it while it lasts.
Last night I went with Claudia and Kirsten to see a Mayan Sacerdote who was a professor of Claudia’s at university. He was this magnetic man just buzzing with energy. He reminds me a lot of my grandfather, actually, even his room that we sat in looks exactly like Dang Dang’s den. Wood paneled walls, tons of books, a computer, and nametags from a thousand conventions. He talked for awhile about how he became a sacerdote, his family, his history. He spoke very softly and even though Spanish is his second language his vocabulary was way out of my league. He lives in a compound of a bunch of houses in which live his children, nieces, nephews, cousins, brothers, etc., in the heart of Xela. His house is the first three story building I have seen since I got here that wasn’t built for the government. He told us about our nahuals, which is kind of like a guiding spirit or energy. It’s a little like a horoscope because it’s based on numbers and astronomy, but in the Mayan religion it’s more than just predicting the future and saying what kind of person you are. Your nahual is like the animal or natural spirit that created or is embodied by the day you were born, and under whose protection you will be your whole life. Even though it’s not my belief exactly, it was really cool, and unbelievably accurate. Though evidently my nahual is one that indicated I am a healer as well as that I am very capable of communicating with spirits and the dead. 
What else? I haven’t electrocuted myself in the shower yet, nor have I learned to cook. I have eaten Tacos de res every day since I found the restaurant (they are unbelievable). The bathrooms have for the most part stopped grossing me out. I’m still not used to the streets here – the sidewalks in some places are a foot wide and two feet off the ground, full of slants and crooked steps. Sometimes they just disappear. Most of the streets are made of stones that get really slippery in the rain, aka all the time, and cars do not acknowledge pedestrian right of way. The city of Xela is divided into eight Zonas. I live in Zona 1, which is more historical and cultural. Zona 3 has all the best coffee shops; Zona 2 has the Zoo (I think). I haven’t explored the rest because honestly all the streets look the same and they repeat names like crazy. There’s a 6 Calle in every zone. I think more than one in a lot of them. People are in general friendly and open and willing to help, and I’m getting better at understanding the directions when they’re given to me. 
I’m so incredibly happy to be here, the experience is irreplaceable and I am quickly falling in love with this country. I miss home a lot, mainly just my family, but I am trying to see and do as much as possible while I’m here. I wish my Spanish were better so I never had to miss a detail of any story due to slow translation, I want to know everything possible about the lives of the people I am meeting. More on what I’m actually doing next blog, I have to go eat some tacos. 

Also, I have been posting pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/39818307@N08/

If that link doesnt work go to flickr.com, search for jessieinxela, then go to people. That's me!

Greetings From Sky City

I am finally settled into Xela, or as settled as I can be considering I can barely communicate. Xela is 7,000 miles above sea level and unlike anywhere I've ever been.  The city is a nest of tiny colorful buildings and streets barely wide enough for one car. It is surrounded by steaming volcanoes, though since we're in what seems like a perpetual cloud the tops of the mountains are always in mist, so the city kind of disintegrates at the edges into whitness.  This afternoon in the break from class it actually was sunny and hot, and then an hour later the skies erupted and the whole town was DRENCHED.  I found out why so many of the streets have arches that reach from the sidewalks with stairs.  The roads flood in many places, I saw a couple that had two feet of muddy water that cars were plowing through. I can't wait to put pictures to upload here but it's drizzling and I don't want to get my camera wet. 

My class is five hours of one on one instruction every day from 8am to 1 pm.  Gaby is my professor and I feel abolutely awful for her, she asks me all these questions that I stumble and plow my way through and as much as I want to be able to chat I know I'm boring her. I also seem to have forgotten most of what I learned in early Spanish classes, I had more trouble with numbers than anything else. And though she is very kind, I can tell she's wondering if I'm operating on all my cylinders when I confuse fifty for five hundred ten times in a row.  I almost didn't take the classes because I figured I'd get better gradually, but now I'm realizing how much time that would take.  The school also has activites in the afternoon - this evening they're playing futbol.  When I declined they were bewildered and I didn't know how to explain that after a morning of humiliating myself verbally there was no way in hell I was going to voluntarily humiliate myself physically too. 

None of the women I'm working with speak any english either.  Rachel, my fellow intern, is off doing work and Tony, the other guy living at the house is really nice but doesn't know any Spanish - he's filming a documentary and is on his own schedule.  I'm trying to get up the nerve to go get food, I can't understand anyone and my ego has taken enough of a beating.  This experience has already been extremely humbling and I have the feeling it will only continue. 

Note: Mom, Dad, you will be happy to know that Tony was in the military special forces for six years, a cop for four, and a fireman for fifteen. He's a huge black dude with dreadlocks halfway down his back. He says since there are no black people in Guatemala people are scared of him.  I am in safe hands, trust me. 

I really want to descibe my house, which is BEAUTIFUL, but I'll wait until after I eat and take some pictures.  And maybe someone will tell me what I'm supposed to be doing....