If you're hoping to read up on all the cool Guatemalan customs that I'm partaking in tonight, prepare to be disappointed. Unless something really dramatic happens in the next four hours, I'll be laying in bed (hopefully dreaming comfortably) when midnight comes along. This week totally beat me up. On Wednesday I hiked up a volcano, then Friday morning I skipped class and helped some of the teachers move furniture into the new school. The lease was up at the other building they had, and they decided to move someplace a bit cheaper since they haven't had a lot of students lately. I had to move about thirty beds and fifty desks, then this morning I helped moved the rest of the stuff. Needless to say, I'm exhausted. The good news is, for helping Thursday the owner of the school brought me out for a really nice dinner and then since I helped today, as he was leaving he told me I can come back and stay at the school for free! Totally cool, I might cash that favor in when Jamie and Rob come to visit me in August.
Being with the moving guys was actually great practice for me. The only people that I've really interacted with here are people who's job it is to be patient with me: teachers, tour guides, etc. These were just regular moving guys that I was helping out and I was able to communicate pretty well with them. Of course the extent of our communications was pretty limited, I only needed to say "Hey, do you want this?" and "It's not heavy, I can do take it by myself" and very infrequently "Oh dear God, I'm going to drop this, help me, quick!" It was also pretty cool to hang with my teachers in a non-school setting. They're really good people, I'm definitely going to miss them when I leave next week (ahh!! next week!!).
I'm not crazy over the new place. It's older than the last house they were in, plus the lay out isn't as good. In our last place they had all the bedrooms in a separate part of the complex, it felt more like a business with an attached apartment building. Here it's definitely more like a house. The office is set up in the living room and all the bedrooms are upstairs. People need to knock on the front door to come in, in the last place there was a bell and the office could buzz people in. It's weird for me because now that I feel like I need to be listening for the door all the time in case someone comes when no one's in the school. I keep telling myself that it's not my job, but I can't help but feel like it's my responsibility when no one is in the office.
Right now there's only me and one other student here, an older man who sponsors a girl here in Guatemala. A lot of the other students left this morning, and three of them are away for the weekend. Unfortunately we only have a key to the iron gate in front of the school, not to the front door, so we need to keep it open all the time. I wouldn't normally worry about that except that the neighbor stopped by to let us know that they were robbed this afternoon, so now I want everything locked and bolted. The other student went out for New Years though and I have no idea what time he'll be getting back, so I need to leave the front door open for him. Lucky for me this house has a second iron gate built into the staircase leading up to the bedrooms, so I locked that. Now someone can get in but they can't get up to the bedrooms. Let them steal what they want from downstairs, I just don't want to wake up to some burglars standing over my bed.
So the big thing to do on New Years here is (you guessed it) set off fireworks! I'm anticipating an hours worth of them, and I'm glad that I have a window now (yay!) so I can watch them while I lay in bed. I'm really excited for what this next year is going to bring, and I love that this time next year I'll have a ton of new friends, speak a new language and be comfortable in my new job! (And I'll be getting to come back home!) Hope everyone's having an awesome New Years!!
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Volcan Pacaya
Today we got to hike up a volcano!! I had heard about a few students doing this in the past and I'd asked the school to organize a trip for us. I had pretty much given up on it since I hadn't heard anything about it in a while, but my teacher finally told me we were going to be heading out this week :) They needed at least six people to go and we ended up having seven (a pretty big group for a school activity). We hired a van which drove us to the trailhead. As soon as we pulled up a big group of kids ran out and tried to sell us walking sticks. I didn't think I needed one but felt bad for the kids, so I bought one (I ended up being really grateful for it.) There were also a bunch of men trying to rent horses to us ($14 bucks for there and back. Not too shabby). I politely refused though because a) I'm not so lazy that I need a horse to complete a hike and b) I'm pretty sure that I would have crushed all of their little horses. The dude reassured me that the horses were much stronger than they looked and could easily bring me up, but after refusing him thirty times he eventually gave up and moved on to other students. My friends rented one though, here's them with Muñeca (Doll)
This is us at the start of the trail. You can see how much dust was kicked up. It was like this the whole time, the whole mountain is covered in ash.
The trail was super steep in most places and the ash/sand cover made it hard to get your footing at times. That in conjunction with the high altitude (8,400 ft- compared to my second highest climb of Mt Katahdin- 5,200 ft) meant that by the time I got to the top, I was dying. I also haven't done a lot of hiking this season and I'm a bit heftier than I've been in the past, so I was definitely looking rough towards the end. It was really gorgeous though and well worth the effort. Here are some shots of the way up:
Here's the view of Volcan de Agua (the big volcano that looms over Antigua) from about half way up the trail
And in the opposite direction, the backside of the mountain that adjoins the volcano. They have a lot of antennae on here from local radio and TV stations, but apparently it's not usually a big problem because when the volcano explodes, it goes straight down and doesn't affect this stuff.
And when we finally got around that mountain, there was the volcano! You can see a bit of smoke coming out of it
After a while we started getting to areas that had been wiped out by the last eruption (May 2010). It was a little surreal to be standing on dried up lava! The colors signify the different elements in the lava, yellow for sulfer and red for magnesium.
It was hard to get a decent picture, but there were really awesome swirls where the lava had flowed down and then dried up.
Here's what the trail was looking like at this point
This is the view of Volcan de Agua from the top of Volcan Pacaya. Look how black the soil is!
Proof that I didn't just pay the horse dudes to ride up and take some pics for me
Here are four of our teachers. The first one is Nanci (my morning teacher) and the third one is Hugo (my afternoon teacher).
And here's a group shot. Yes, there were even stray dogs up on the volcano
There was also this really cool cave up there. It was so warm inside because of all the lava flowing underground. When the lava is really flowing people use this cave as a sauna
And then we headed back. Going down was much easier, especially with all of the sand. We basically just had to gracefully fall down the mountain.
Sadly, the volcano wasn't active enough for us to roast marshmallows over open lava pits as I'd hoped. I'm definitely going to try to head back another day before I leave Guatemala (as soon as I forget what a hard hike it was)
This is us at the start of the trail. You can see how much dust was kicked up. It was like this the whole time, the whole mountain is covered in ash.
The trail was super steep in most places and the ash/sand cover made it hard to get your footing at times. That in conjunction with the high altitude (8,400 ft- compared to my second highest climb of Mt Katahdin- 5,200 ft) meant that by the time I got to the top, I was dying. I also haven't done a lot of hiking this season and I'm a bit heftier than I've been in the past, so I was definitely looking rough towards the end. It was really gorgeous though and well worth the effort. Here are some shots of the way up:
Here's the view of Volcan de Agua (the big volcano that looms over Antigua) from about half way up the trail
And in the opposite direction, the backside of the mountain that adjoins the volcano. They have a lot of antennae on here from local radio and TV stations, but apparently it's not usually a big problem because when the volcano explodes, it goes straight down and doesn't affect this stuff.
And when we finally got around that mountain, there was the volcano! You can see a bit of smoke coming out of it
After a while we started getting to areas that had been wiped out by the last eruption (May 2010). It was a little surreal to be standing on dried up lava! The colors signify the different elements in the lava, yellow for sulfer and red for magnesium.
It was hard to get a decent picture, but there were really awesome swirls where the lava had flowed down and then dried up.
Here's what the trail was looking like at this point
This is the view of Volcan de Agua from the top of Volcan Pacaya. Look how black the soil is!
Proof that I didn't just pay the horse dudes to ride up and take some pics for me
Here are four of our teachers. The first one is Nanci (my morning teacher) and the third one is Hugo (my afternoon teacher).
And here's a group shot. Yes, there were even stray dogs up on the volcano
There was also this really cool cave up there. It was so warm inside because of all the lava flowing underground. When the lava is really flowing people use this cave as a sauna
And then we headed back. Going down was much easier, especially with all of the sand. We basically just had to gracefully fall down the mountain.
Sadly, the volcano wasn't active enough for us to roast marshmallows over open lava pits as I'd hoped. I'm definitely going to try to head back another day before I leave Guatemala (as soon as I forget what a hard hike it was)
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Museo de Ciudad Viejo
First of all, we had a massive influx of new students today so now I have lots of people to do activities with! (yay!) I've been hanging out with a few people in particular, Wesley (a 17-year old high schooler from Houston who happens to have an awesome name), Melody (a 20's something law student from Phoenix who shares my fear of sharks and dolls), her boyfriend John (also a law student, but he's from Georgia), and Tamra (a mostly-retired lawyer from Los Angeles). We're up to ten people here now and we're expecting another two this week. The really cool thing about this (aside from the fact that I get to meet more people) is that now we can go on bigger activities together since there are more people to absorb the cost. So that being said, guess what we're doing tomorrow???? Hiking up an active volcano!! I've been chomping at the bit for this, I seriously can't wait. We need to have at least six people go in order for it to be a possibility, and I have five definites and two maybes, so tomorrow I'll be doing my best job to peer pressure everyone else.
So anyway, with that being said, today's activity was to go to a town that had been totally annihilated by a volcano. It's actually quite interesting. Originally the capital of Guatemala was in the north of the country but there was a ton of fighting between the local indians there and the Spanish conquistadors, so they moved it to a town further south, Ciudad Viejo, in 1527. Things were a lot more stable there, but in 1541 Volcan Agua (the one near my school that I take pictures of all the time) erupted and destroyed the city. Along with the lava and ash, the eruption caused a huge mudslide which completely covered the city. The capital was reestablished in Antigua and the people of Ciudad Viejo were left to rebuild their town from scratch. Today the town is relatively small, but very beautiful. It's a farming town and doesn't get a ton of tourists, but it does have a museum dedicated to the incident in 1527.
First, some shots of the town:
And lucky me, the museum was having a reptile show!! Totally awesome. These snakes are all native to Guatemala:
And the other native of Guatemala that I hope to NEVER EVER see outside of a glass tank, la tarantula
Here are some of the cool artifacts that have been found as people have done construction around the town. This first one is similar to a mortar and pestle. People used to (and still do) use this to grind corn, nuts, grains, etc to make flour and stuff. It's basically the original food processor.
Some arrow and spear heads
Here's a bowl from 500 AD. Oh wait a minute, I guess these things aren't from the volcano. I need to start paying better attention during these tours. But look! An old bowl!
Here's another bowl!
And here's an old letter from before the volcano. I'm adding it in here so that once my Spanish is better I can read what it says.
And then BOOM. Volcano stuff.
Those are all pics of the volcanos around here erupting. The last big eruption: May 2010. Guess which volcano... Yup, the one I'm climbing up tomorrow! I CANT WAIT!
(Yeah, and that's it. The volcano museum ended up not having all that much in it. Lesson of the day folks: volcanos take no prisoners. They'll destroy everything)
So anyway, with that being said, today's activity was to go to a town that had been totally annihilated by a volcano. It's actually quite interesting. Originally the capital of Guatemala was in the north of the country but there was a ton of fighting between the local indians there and the Spanish conquistadors, so they moved it to a town further south, Ciudad Viejo, in 1527. Things were a lot more stable there, but in 1541 Volcan Agua (the one near my school that I take pictures of all the time) erupted and destroyed the city. Along with the lava and ash, the eruption caused a huge mudslide which completely covered the city. The capital was reestablished in Antigua and the people of Ciudad Viejo were left to rebuild their town from scratch. Today the town is relatively small, but very beautiful. It's a farming town and doesn't get a ton of tourists, but it does have a museum dedicated to the incident in 1527.
First, some shots of the town:
And lucky me, the museum was having a reptile show!! Totally awesome. These snakes are all native to Guatemala:
And the other native of Guatemala that I hope to NEVER EVER see outside of a glass tank, la tarantula
Here are some of the cool artifacts that have been found as people have done construction around the town. This first one is similar to a mortar and pestle. People used to (and still do) use this to grind corn, nuts, grains, etc to make flour and stuff. It's basically the original food processor.
Some arrow and spear heads
Here's a bowl from 500 AD. Oh wait a minute, I guess these things aren't from the volcano. I need to start paying better attention during these tours. But look! An old bowl!
Here's another bowl!
And here's an old letter from before the volcano. I'm adding it in here so that once my Spanish is better I can read what it says.
And then BOOM. Volcano stuff.
Those are all pics of the volcanos around here erupting. The last big eruption: May 2010. Guess which volcano... Yup, the one I'm climbing up tomorrow! I CANT WAIT!
(Yeah, and that's it. The volcano museum ended up not having all that much in it. Lesson of the day folks: volcanos take no prisoners. They'll destroy everything)
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Fashion Show in San Antonio
I'm so excited to write this entry, this was such a cool activity. Elsa, one of the teachers here, offered to bring us all to her house in a neighboring village and show us the textiles that her family makes. They're Mayan and like most traditional Mayans, the women make most of their own clothing and dress in culturally appropriate garb. Men have drifted away from distinctive clothing and dress in more mainstream (though conservative) outfits like button up shirts and slacks. The women usually wear long patterned skirts with embroidered shirts. The women in Elsa's family hand-sew all sorts of textiles to sell in the markets. This is a very popular profession here; every day you pass women on the streets selling their table clothes and hand towels. Here are some of their goods:
You can see that their house has a dirt floor. This is typical in Guatemala; usually the rooms have cement floors and are built around a dirt square that serves as the common area. The family sits on stools or straw mats while they eat, chat and work. The kitchen is connected to this space and since they frequently cook with firewood, it's better to have lots of open areas to the outside so the smoke can get out. Luckily it stays pretty warm here, so keeping the house well insulated isn't a concern. Elsa's house has aluminum roofing over the whole thing including the garden which is why it's just dirt. Some people keep this area open and use it as an actual garden or grow a bit of grass.
I don't remember if I already talked about this in another post, but it's typical here for people to live with their extended families. Usually when a couple has children, once those kids are older they're given a section of the house to start their own families. People don't typically have their own bedrooms here, sometimes the children share a room with their parents until they get married. My teacher Nanci is 24 and she shares a bedroom with her older sister and mom. Once she gets married she will move into a bedroom in her husband's families house and they will raise their children there with them. Typically sons stay with their families and bring their wives in, though this is dependent on which family has more space for them. It's really unusual to find a family with just a mom, dad and kids. Usually people live with their brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and grandparents all under one roof and they all help out with each others kids. I actually really love the idea of living with my siblings and their partners, though I'm not so keen on sharing a room with all of them until they're married.
Speaking of getting married, another Mayan custom is to make a special embroidered shirt for the bride called a huipil. The bride makes this for herself after she gets engaged. It can take several months to a year to make. Here's one that Elsa's sister-in-law made. The detailing on this is incredible, it's also double-sided which requires an obscene amount of work.
The bride then makes a large blanket for her mother-in-law as a sign of respect. She has one year to sew it and she's not allowed to get help from anyone else. The more detailed and skillfully done it is, the better. The quality of the blanket indicates how good of a wife she will be. The mother-in-law can refuse it if she doesn't think it's good enough, and then the bride needs to start over again (and the wedding needs to be pushed back another year until it's completed.) Here is the one Elsa's sister-in-law made. Absolutely gorgeous.
Here Elsa shows us how to use the blankets. They can be used as a jacket like this:
Or for carrying babies like this:
Or for carrying your books/bread/laundry...ON YOUR HEAD!
You can actually carry a lot more on your head than you can in your arms, plus then it leaves your hands open for everything. The gringos weren't as good at it, but we made pretty valiant efforts.
Some of my friends giving it a go:
But then she reminded us that she was way better than we could ever hope to be
Next she showed us how they weave their blankets. It seemed kind of complicated to me
This little ten year old girl knew how to do it though. She walked around and showed us the little blanket that she had made, it was great!
Wesley had a go at it
After that, it was time for a wedding! They staged a wedding for us so we could see what the Mayan customs were in action. First my friend Melody got dressed in the traditional wedding outfit:
Melody then presented her mother-in-law Kana with the shawl she had made for her. (Thankfully Kana liked it so she doesnt have to re-do it)
Jon got off easy, he didn't need to wear anything special
After the wedding we were all fed a traditional post-wedding meal of beef stew and rice (it's called something else but the name is escaping me right now) and horchata which is a rice-based drink with sugar and vanilla. It's delicious.
Naturally I bought lots of things from Elsa's family since they were beautifully crafted and I knew the money would be going straight to the artists. Here's my loot:
This is a table cloth I bought myself. The details are awesome:
I haven't decided if I'm going to keep this one or give it to my mom. It's a runner for the table that they made. I love the colors.
This one was done with a machine but I think it's gorgeous anyway. This one's for mom
And this too!
Here's a scarf I bought myself
I bought a handmade hand towel for Stacy (mmmm hmmm!)
A change purse for Kayla and Lauren
Funny story with this one. The way it was hanging on the clothes line, I couldn't see the heads of the birds. I thought it was two mermaids standing next to one another, so naturally I had to have it for Jamie. Once she took it down i realized it was actually two Quetzales (the Guatemalan national bird). It was so gorgeous though, I decided to get it for her anyway!
Last picture. On my way home I passed Brady's Guatemalan cousin! It made me miss him :/
You can see that their house has a dirt floor. This is typical in Guatemala; usually the rooms have cement floors and are built around a dirt square that serves as the common area. The family sits on stools or straw mats while they eat, chat and work. The kitchen is connected to this space and since they frequently cook with firewood, it's better to have lots of open areas to the outside so the smoke can get out. Luckily it stays pretty warm here, so keeping the house well insulated isn't a concern. Elsa's house has aluminum roofing over the whole thing including the garden which is why it's just dirt. Some people keep this area open and use it as an actual garden or grow a bit of grass.
I don't remember if I already talked about this in another post, but it's typical here for people to live with their extended families. Usually when a couple has children, once those kids are older they're given a section of the house to start their own families. People don't typically have their own bedrooms here, sometimes the children share a room with their parents until they get married. My teacher Nanci is 24 and she shares a bedroom with her older sister and mom. Once she gets married she will move into a bedroom in her husband's families house and they will raise their children there with them. Typically sons stay with their families and bring their wives in, though this is dependent on which family has more space for them. It's really unusual to find a family with just a mom, dad and kids. Usually people live with their brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and grandparents all under one roof and they all help out with each others kids. I actually really love the idea of living with my siblings and their partners, though I'm not so keen on sharing a room with all of them until they're married.
Speaking of getting married, another Mayan custom is to make a special embroidered shirt for the bride called a huipil. The bride makes this for herself after she gets engaged. It can take several months to a year to make. Here's one that Elsa's sister-in-law made. The detailing on this is incredible, it's also double-sided which requires an obscene amount of work.
The bride then makes a large blanket for her mother-in-law as a sign of respect. She has one year to sew it and she's not allowed to get help from anyone else. The more detailed and skillfully done it is, the better. The quality of the blanket indicates how good of a wife she will be. The mother-in-law can refuse it if she doesn't think it's good enough, and then the bride needs to start over again (and the wedding needs to be pushed back another year until it's completed.) Here is the one Elsa's sister-in-law made. Absolutely gorgeous.
Here Elsa shows us how to use the blankets. They can be used as a jacket like this:
Or for carrying babies like this:
Or for carrying your books/bread/laundry...ON YOUR HEAD!
You can actually carry a lot more on your head than you can in your arms, plus then it leaves your hands open for everything. The gringos weren't as good at it, but we made pretty valiant efforts.
Some of my friends giving it a go:
But then she reminded us that she was way better than we could ever hope to be
Next she showed us how they weave their blankets. It seemed kind of complicated to me
This little ten year old girl knew how to do it though. She walked around and showed us the little blanket that she had made, it was great!
Wesley had a go at it
After that, it was time for a wedding! They staged a wedding for us so we could see what the Mayan customs were in action. First my friend Melody got dressed in the traditional wedding outfit:
Melody then presented her mother-in-law Kana with the shawl she had made for her. (Thankfully Kana liked it so she doesnt have to re-do it)
Jon got off easy, he didn't need to wear anything special
After the wedding we were all fed a traditional post-wedding meal of beef stew and rice (it's called something else but the name is escaping me right now) and horchata which is a rice-based drink with sugar and vanilla. It's delicious.
Naturally I bought lots of things from Elsa's family since they were beautifully crafted and I knew the money would be going straight to the artists. Here's my loot:
This is a table cloth I bought myself. The details are awesome:
I haven't decided if I'm going to keep this one or give it to my mom. It's a runner for the table that they made. I love the colors.
This one was done with a machine but I think it's gorgeous anyway. This one's for mom
And this too!
Here's a scarf I bought myself
I bought a handmade hand towel for Stacy (mmmm hmmm!)
A change purse for Kayla and Lauren
Funny story with this one. The way it was hanging on the clothes line, I couldn't see the heads of the birds. I thought it was two mermaids standing next to one another, so naturally I had to have it for Jamie. Once she took it down i realized it was actually two Quetzales (the Guatemalan national bird). It was so gorgeous though, I decided to get it for her anyway!
Last picture. On my way home I passed Brady's Guatemalan cousin! It made me miss him :/
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