TIKAL

This makes me so MAD that these pictures are sideways, Tikal is phenomenal and this is just botching things majorly. Anyway-TIKAL is an ancient Mayan city in the way North of Guatemala. It's 10 hours on the bus from the city, so i've been sort of putting it off my whole time here even though everyone says its a must see. It was incredible though, another major stairs weekend...the ruins are absolutely massive, once you reach the top you are looking out over a sea of jungle canopies and pyramid tops, it's pretty incredible. I felt like I had traveled straight back in time to the Mayan Empire standing atop a pyramid, gracefully reigning over my kingdom. JOKE! Ungracefully dying of a heat stroke and unshowered on account of the fact that my bus up there left at 5:30am and I woke up at exactly 5:35. Yessssss. 

Homeward bound.

Tonight is my last night in Guate. So many sad sad goodbyes the last couple of days. I have a group of babies at school, and I was just noticing today (weirdly...for the first time) that a bunch of them have graduated into walkers from cribs and to baby food from bottles. I forget that 3 months is a long time in baby world. A lot happens in that time. We had a big goodbye ceremony I suppose you would call it...which means I had to stand in the middle of the play area whilst they all looked at me and the teachers presented me with a lamb stuffed animal. I'm not sure exactly what the significance of that is but, it was sweet nonetheless:) There's not really anything else to say about it, I just thought this blog needed some closure, so. I am looking forward to cars that yield for pedestrians, and hot water in the taps, and toilets that flush toilet paper (that's going to be a hard readjustment), and police officers that don't "chhh chhhh" you on the streets, and my wardrobe (I don't believe I will be wearing the clothes that I brought here ever again), and clean winter air, and real coffee. Which will most likely be imported from Guatemala, ironically. 

Thank you everyone who followed my blog and sent me so much love, you are all wonderful and it meant so much to me. Even though most of you are family members and thereby obligated to anyway. 

I feel like right now when you're on the phone and you're not really sure how to hang up so you just go through like 7 different variations of how to say bye with like, lots of "ok's" and long "wellllll's".  And then it just gets awkward. 

Adios Guatemala y gracias por todos. Siempre estaras en mi corazon. 

Coban & Semuc Champey

Dangettttt. Sorry, I can't make the photo's upright, you'll have to look at them sideways.

This is after 40billion stairs. Diiiiiisgusting.
Looking down on the limestone bridge and pools (where we hiked down to and swam!) from the lookout. 

Here are photo's of Coban and Semuc Champey. Coban is a small city in northeastern Guatemala, and though the city isn't very exciting...at all...it's a hotspot because of all the incredible jungle tours that are available in the surrounding areas. I did a tour of Semuc Champey, which is a natural limestone bridge wayyyy deep in the jungle a couple hours east of Coban. The entire hike and tour is amazing, but limestone bridge itself is absolutely incredible because on top of it is a series of turquoise fresh water pools that have collected there from the waterfall and rainwater. We did a pretty short but seriously grueling hike up to a lookout and then down to the pools. Most of the hike to the lookout was up almost completely vertical wooden stairs, whoever made them was not thinking clearly because they were built for a giant, I seriously felt like Alice in Wonderland when she gets all shrunk up by that mushroom and then everything is huge for her. Especially I don't know what they were thinking because most Guatemalan people are a lot smaller than me. At the bottom we swam across 4 of the pools, it was so cool. They are tiered as the river goes down, so we would swim across one and then jump over the waterfall down into the next one and so on. Except for the elevation between the pools got progressively huger as they go down and by the last one the guide threw a rope down so that after you did the bajillion foot jump over the waterfall you could haul yourself back up by scrambling up the limestone cliff holding the rope. I did not do this one. Shocker. 

We also did a cave tour, with candles because no one had headlamps, which was really creepy and really cool and also full of stairs and steps for people much taller than myself. For the Mayan people this particular limestone cave is a very holy place, our guide compared it to a cathedral. There are several altars where people still come to make sacrifices and offerings to the Gods. There are a lot of legends and beliefs associated with this cave because there is only one entrance and after years and years no one has been able to find a different one, some people believe it leads to Mexico or Xela, while others believe it is the entrance to hell and that if you walk deep enough into the cave you will eventually end up there. At one point our guide had us all blow out our candles and it was the most bizarre, darkest black I have ever been in and at that point, listening to the screeching bats and imagining spiders the size of my hand crawling down my shirt, the whole hell theory seemed very probable. 

Our bus had 14 people in it on the way back and was not a happy camper and was sputtering and sliding all the way out. So in the dark dark night we stopped to switch busses and I didn't know this but we were parked on top of a cattle guard and so of course I stepped right off the bus and into it. This sounds hilarious but it wasn't at all. It totally annihilated my leg and my ankle and so that was not a fun way to end the day:( Luckily the man behind the desk at my hostel was really sweet and he gave me a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and some cotton balls and a german guy on my bus gave me two band aids. 

The end is near...

Making a rainbow with Janelle.
My 3 personal favorites. All dressed up for graduation. 

Sweet Dominique. 

Kites!

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I'm coming to the end of my third to last week in Guatemala. And although 2 1/2 more weeks seems like a long time to go...this week has already gone by at the speed of light. The volunteer I have been both rooming with and teaching with for the past 6 weeks leaves on Friday for home, so i'll be here alone for a week. It will definitely be a challenge managing our class alone, but I'm a little excited to experience this placement completely on my own, since all the time I have spent there has been with atleast one other volunteer. also I must say I am looking forward to standing around my room naked for as long as I want. A group of 3 women arrive on the 12th, two of them are just staying for the week and the other is another 6 weeker. So they will all be here for my final week. It's been very interesting to be here and watch people come and go...i'm getting a little excited to be on the leaving side of things, instead of being the one always left:)

Things have been going great at the school where Janelle and I are teaching. We have been able to do more and more as the teachers get more used to having us in their schedule and as we learn more about the capabilities of our classes. Last week we made coil pots (out of clay leftover from a pottery demo at a museum Janelle and I visited) with our oldest class, 7-12 year olds. The kids did an absolutely incredible job, I get so proud every time I look at them. I think they were psyched to be finally given a challenging project with real materials. A bunch of parents dropped off garbage bags of recycling materials for us to use in crafts...so we've been trying to use them when we can. We made cereal box masks, and egg carton caterpillars with the little crew- also a big hit. This week were doing pinatas in an effort to use up the everest sized mountain of newspaper taking up unavailable space in our 12'x12' classroom.  Things have been going equally as well and are improving just as quickly at my other placement (where I go tues&thurs), though the experience is 100% different. Because the kids are so handicapped and all, save one, are unable to verbally communicate, it challenges a whole other part of my brain. The more I learn about the kids, the more I fall in love with it. 

My sister, dad, and grandma were here for a week for Thanksgiving. Best thing ever. I met them in Lake Atitlan on Thursday night for a weekend of pure bliss. It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen - that, combined with my family- I couldn't have been happier. Sophie and I did a canopy tour of the jungle on sunday morning and did 8 zip lines over the tree tops, yeah baby!  This weekend i'm heading to Coban solo to do a jungle hiking limestone cave exploring water of some sort swimming sort of combination exravanganza so, that will definitely be an adventure. 

Missing everyone and the white Methow winter. Hope you're all doing well.

Do all things with Love.

Antigua, Guatemala.

These are rented tombs in the cemetary for the low class Guatemalans who cannot afford a place in the ground and a proper headstone. This particular section is reserved for children, however there are larger portions for adults. People rent them for a certain period of time and if they do not update their payment in time the body is removed to make space for other people.
My favorite Church. 

 An egret flying over the mangroves in Monterrico on the Pacific Coast.
These beautiful kids are paddling all over Rio Dulce, they came up to our boat selling water flowers and crabs from the river. 

4:30 am lancha tour of the mangroves in Monterrico.
Livingston, Guatemala - on the Caribbean coast - the culture here is completely different...it's like being in a different country. Livingston was formed by the black slaves that didn't go all the way up to Belize. They have their own language - sort of an english/spanish mix, they also dress really differently, completely opposite of the extremely conservative way people dress in the rest of the country...it's more like being in Jamaica then Guatemala. 

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This is sort of a random assortment of my favorite photos of some of the places I have been so far.

So sorry!

I'm sorry I haven't updated for so long! My computer has been, and still is:(, broken. So i've had really limited access to the internet. I promise a long photo-filled entry as soon as it's up and running again.

I have been traveling a lot on the weekends. Last weekend I went to the coast to Monterrico with a couple of friends for some r&r. It was absolutely gorgeous. The beach is enormous and black sand from the volcanoes, and the waves are enormous (and highly dangerous) so there is a huge white spray way up onto the beach. Monterrico is also famous for it's nature reserve, and we participated in a giant baby turtle release on Saturday night- totally cool to see.

I am still working with my roommate teaching english and art (or whatever else they want, depending on the day) at a daycare for the kids of policemen. We have just cut that placement to 3 days a week, so Tuesdays and Thursdays we go to a different placement called Marina Guirola. It's an orphanage for severely disabled kids. We started today - it was pretty intense. It's a huge contrast to the other placement.

Other than that, with volunteers coming in and out depending on the week, things have just been pretty hectic. I can't even remember what I did with myself for a month in solitude, it seems like a million years ago.

I was thinking of everyone this weekend on Sunday during McCabes memorial, sad not to be home. I am thinking of him every day as I teach art with my kids, he will always be an incredible role model and someone I will continue to measure myself to my whole life. My heart goes out to everyone in the community who is missing him.

Dia de Los Muertes

November 1st is the Dia de Los Muertes, the Day of the Dead. To celebrate, the Guatemalan people fly kites to chase away the evil spirits. We went to a festival near Antigua, it was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in my life - I don't think I can do it justice trying to explain, hopefully the pictures speak for themselves. The kites are all handmade with tissue paper, tiny pieces collaged together to make these absolutely enormous and incredibly detailed and vibrant kites. We helped a man work on one earlier this week and we just glued it together, row by row of tiny little triangles of tissue paper. When the kite is finished the smaller ones are backed with big, flat peices of white tissue paper and then glued onto a bamboo frame. The giant ones were backed with what looked like big peices of black plastic bag. At the festival kites are just flying up all over the place, you see a little kid running with a monstrous ball of rope and then all of a sudden a giant kite is swooping toward your head. Lots of clothes-lined and dive-bombed disoriented bystanders. Hilarious people watching:) Hands down one of the coolest things i've seen yet.