New school.

There are now 4 of us here volunteering. It is SO nice to have company. Too bad for them I have a months worth of bad jokes and general weirdness that is deciding to rear it's not at all funny head. 7 more volunteers are coming on Saturday, but only for a week. It's going to be a blast.

I started at my new placement on Monday with Janelle, my roommate. So far we're sort of circulating through the classrooms and getting a feel for things, because next week we start teaching a class of our own. Monday I worked in the nursery with 1 year olds and two babies, it was the greatest:) It's amazing the things that they do to entertain the kids here...the classrooms are tiny and they find activities to keep the kids happy in a super confined space for hours. For instance a pile of colored popcicle sticks, totally busy for a half hour. Or today with my 4 year old class we put buttons into balloons and then blew them up. (worst idea ever, the kids shook them around and they popped and shot buttons at everyone. I have no idea what in the world the teacher was thinking of). At my last placement, recess was a giant cement patio. No toys, no playground...and the kids were totally happy.

We went to this market in the square on Sunday and there was tons of religious karaoke going on. Apparently this is big here. And people get realllllyyy into it. Also the variety of things that people are selling is so bizarre, they spread out a blanket and sell things from these beautiful handsewn textiles to bobby pins and plastic banana clips. We even walked by a totally innocent looking woman selling sex toys. Graphic sex toys. All lined out on her traditional guatemalan blanket. She can't get many customers....it would take a lot of guts to purchase a giant plastic penis in the middle of central square.

Before I left Santa Sofia the teacher and I were choreographing a dance for the end of the year performance, and on my last day she asked me to be in the performance with them. So I don't have to say goodbye just yet:) We'll see how that one goes....

I'm sorry for no pictures - next time. Hope you're all doing well!

I realized I haven't put up pictures of the homebase yet. My B dog. Here you go.


Mi calle.

All of the house and store fronts are locked and gated and flat, and often really scary looking, but then you go inside and there is just this massive amount of space behind them. And it's all developed and gorgeous in there. It's like every house is a secret.


Inside. The street is through that open door...the kitchen and bathrooms and space pictured below are behind me. If that makes sense....


More inside. Hang-out area.
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Though most houses don't follow the traditional layout anymore, because of earthquake damage and frankly american influence, the traditional layout for houses is the most beautiful idea. The old houses are all built around a square courtyard, with an open roof and tons of plants, and in some of the wealthier houses, a fountain. The rooms are in a corridor that surrounds the courtyard, so its sort of like a long giant square, connected hallway that borders the courtyard...broken into rooms. It's set up so that if there is bad weather you can close off the entire corridor from the courtyard and access all the rooms by walking through them consecutively. Privacy is a non issue:) When the weather is nice, all the doors of the rooms are open into the courtyard and the whole house is open and bright and beautiful. I am in love. Our house is sort of a modernized version of this, as most middle class houses are now, we have a small open planty courtyard area, but the rooms don't connect in the old way, and we have two floors. It's still completely beautiful though:)

Adios Santa Sofia!

I love this picture, she is so adorable. And such a pain, she's in time-out every day.



Tomorrow is my last day at Santa Sofia, the school for kids with learning disabilities where I have been working. It has been so challenging, but I have really connected with my class, especially this boy with autism named Rafael, it's going to be sad to leave him. Monday I start in a new program- the kids are on vacation now until January so everything has gone to daycare now. I'll be working in a daycare for kids whose parents are in the police force. They are giving another volunteer and me a classroom to teach art- I am SO excited- so we get to plan our classes and structure them as we want. I think we have different classes of toddlers to 13 year olds that will cycle through. I can't wait.

I had Monday and Tuesday off because of a holiday and so I went to Cayes de Belice for 4 days, which is an island chain off of the mainland of Belize. It was gorgeous, and I made friends! Hurrah! It was so nice to have people my age to talk to. Also lots of men in speedos, way too much information for such a small island.

I will update after I start my new placement.

We're going on a bear hunt...

6am...2 hours from the summit. I don't have any good pictures of the nighttime... was too tired and also too distracted to take any. Also the fog = all white pictures.

Final climb...


Mmm...above the clouds. So beautiful.

9 am. Heading down...Literally holding onto the grass to keep from sliding away. Look how steep!

This was one of 3 times we had to literally belay ourselves with vines backwards down these little chutes in the woods. It was an almost complete drop down...so sketchy. And so muddy. And so many bugs and leaves down my shirt.

Corn feilds = 2 hour marker from the bus. Conquered Volcan de Agua in the background.

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This weekend I hiked Volcan de Agua. We left Guate at 9:30 on Saturday, were hiking by 12am and reached the base at 6pm on Sunday. It ended up being 17 hours in total I believe...with a half hour to sleep at the top. I was (still am...sadly) exhausted. But it was incredible. I thought it was going to be a tourist style hike but it turned out to be a group of about 35 Guate natives who do this as a hobby...most of them are on Volcano number 5 this year...some on number 25, (of the 35+ in Guatemala). So...sad for Sula. I was the butt of literally every joke...luckily I didn't understand most of them, elswise my self-esteem may just have hit rock bottom. I thought that the purpose of hiking at night was to catch the sunrise at the summit....wrong. After picking up 3 fully armed police men in Antigua on the way to the Volcano (they hiked the whole thing with us, in full uniform with gun in holster), and being ordered to be completely silent for the first 2 hours of the hike, (so no one would know we were going up there) I learned that the reason to do it an night is for safety purposes. Apparently there are tons of robberies on the volcano because the hike is so popular. I thought this was bizarre...but after the first 2 hours of hiking through a literal garbage dump (stray dogs and sewer smell to boot) this seems very plausible, and I was thankful for the police escort. Because the bus can't make it up to the base, the first couple hours are sort of sketch...i'm not exactly sure where we were because it was dark, but it was definitely not a pleasant wilderness area.

I'm going to try to explain in pictures...it makes me exhausted to try to put into words. The hike up was all night...after scrambling through a foot of mud and rocks, literally if you looked up from the "trail" for a minute you were flat on your face, we reached the summit at 8. The last 2 hours were completely gruelling and are a total blur...combination of no sleep and high altitude make for very hard brain usage. We ate and slept for a half hour at the summit and then hiked down, another 8 hours (it was supposed to take 4). Our guide decided to take an alternate route...resulting in complete tarzan style bamboo jungle no trail massive bug consumption and leaves in my shirt hike for 6 hours of mayhem in the bushes....it was like tele skiing sort of, just hanging on to the vines for dear life as we skated/fell down the muddy path (created by our guide step by step). Exhilaratingly fun for the first two hours, absolutely miserable for the other 4. My knees and thighs are dead to this world. One thing I learned that I feel very strongly about- the descent should NEVER take longer then the hike up. Never. It goes against so many rules of nature....it's just not okay.

Antigua

Antigua from the rooftop of Museo/Iglesia de San Franciso
I can't remember the name...but this is a monument of a church that was destroyed by an earthquake.

The crafts markets are incredible.


Last weekend I took a chicken bus to Antigua. Chicken busses are called chicken busses because people from the rural towns come in on them because they are super cheap to trade their goods and work in the city. Way back when they used to bring their small animals on them, chickens...apparently, and stick them in what is now the luggage rack. They are insanely crowded, I was pushing through people to get a seat, and literally couldnt tell if I was sitting on a seat or just wedged in between people hard enough that it felt like one. They are exremely colorful and beautiful. People jump on and off of them, sort of bus hopping, selling things, a man got on and gave us a full sermon out of the Bible.

Antigua is beautiful. There are a gazillion churches, lots of them more like museums now or monuments after being destroyed by earthquakes. It is also sort of nestled between...I want to say 3 volcanoes? Volcan de Agua is the clearest one in sight, and it just looms out in the south end of town, it's stunning. Mm..i'm not sure what else to say about it, it's lovely. Tons and tons of good restaurants and pretty buildings.

Today I had a salsa dance lesson...alone...with this woman with tattooed eyeliner and hairsprayed hair. Her dance studio was two feet wide and she is a terrible teacher. I am not going back. Top ten most painful experiences of my life.

It was really good to get back to school after the weekend, I missed the kids. I'm starting to learn more and more about their individual disabilities. One of the boys is autistic, he doesn't work with the rest of the class and spends the day talking to the walls. I know that sounds like i'm being funny...i'm not, it's really interesting. But today I was working one on one with him trying to finish a test they had to take, and I was asking him to circle numbers as I said them, adn when I got to the number seven he jumped up and freaked out. He wouldn't color it or say it or have anything to do with it. I'm dying to know whats going on with him and that number.

Other than that...I have spanish coming out my ears. Or I guess going in my ears...HA! I miss everyone.