Global Citizenship Term Abroad

Final update. Top left photo is from when we volunteered to work at a coffee farm, which happens to be in the mountains. Next to it is a photo from a Black Nazarene parade. Women carried the statue. Next is a photo of a church ruin, with the heads of statues stolen. It’s apparently a lucrative thing. Then there’s a photo from a children’s benefit that we went to. The next two are from a demonstration for women’s rights, and against abuse and violence. Next is the Guatemala city dump, where thousands of people work as scavengers. Next is from a forensic lab. You can read more about our forensic lab trip on our Political Science professor’s blog right here, where you can also read a lot about our other class activities. (While I’m at it, check out this website for our Sociology class. It has some interesting modules.) The last two photos are of painters at Plaza Mayor and of Volcan de Agua in Antigua.

Spanish-Mayan student-farmer

I’ve been a bit busy with schoolwork, what with 1500-word essays due weekly, and a regular schoolweek’s worth of reading to do daily. Hooray for intensive courses. Still, we’ve been up to some fun stuff.

You know how they say that 20% of the words in a language are used in 80% of all conversations? Well, I’m not at 20% yet, but I’m pretty happy with my Spanish. I enjoy the conversations I have with my host family. We’ve talked about climate change; there was a drought instead of the rainy season this year, and then it’s been raining a lot now that it should be just cold and dry, because of the storm in El Salvador. Mountaintops should be white with frozen dew by November first, but that didn’t happen this year. We also talked about how the price of petroleum just went up by over 20%, and how the Guatemalan government recently tried unsuccessfully to borrow money from the US. Now they don’t know how to fulfill their promised monthly stipends to the indigenous people. We discuss lots of different stuff; it’s really cool.

We went to a talk about the Mayan religion. And guess what. The world is not going to end on December 20, 2012. According to the Mayans, there are different energies in the universe, and they come out in cycles. December 20, 2012 is the end of one period in such a cycle. It’s a rebirth-type event. There is to be no destruction, just a change in our spiritual consciousness.

We also had our Mayan signs (nahuales) read. Mine (Tijax) says that I’m like a double-edged sword, so I need to be careful. I have the potential to be a healer. There will be much pain in my life and things won’t always go my way, but I have a strong spirit. On a scale of one to duh, it seems quite accurate, although I think it shows only one side of me, no?

I spent this weekend at a coffee and banana farm. (I’ll post coffee-picking photos later.) Our group’s top three communists and top three capitalists (self included) were there. The farm was structured as a collective when it began, but it’s an association now. The guy who gave us an orientation said that the collective didn’t work because it just wasn’t fair to give everyone equal shares in the export income when people didn’t do the same amount of work. This led to a discussion among us, of course. Both the communists and the capitalists recognize that the problem with capitalism as it is now is that people don’t have equal opportunities. But the communists propose equality as a solution, while we want equity (equal opportunity). There’s a fundamental difference. Equality will remove the incentives for productivity and efficiency, and that’s no bueno. We want to fix capitalism, not abolish it.

November already!

Batch three! What new adventures have we gotten ourselves into now? Well, we went to the beach in a city called Churirin. It was a nice place with a swimming pool and a tiki hut. We did the beach bonfire thing, as you can see in the second picture. We also went up the highest peak in Central America. It was so beautiful up there! After about an hour of hiking, you could see where the fog ends. Near the peak, you could see where the low clouds end. Check out the photo of the sunrise. Whut. Thirdly, we went to see the Mayan ruins in Zaculeu. See those shapes in the corner? Those are people. After visiting the ruins, we had dinner in a restaurant with a marimba band. And guess what… I walked up the stage (with some prodding from our professor) and asked them to teach me to play. And they did! It was fun. The next two photos are of churches. The one at night is of the church in Huehuetenango; the other one is of the church in Todos Santos, where we went to for their November first celebrations, which included a horse race, a football game, a small fair with ferris wheels and various stalls, and a little performance by people in costumes. We’ve also been busy with schoolwork; we have an essay due every week, tons of reading, etc. But these are very fun times.

Batch 2

Here’s batch two of the Guatemala photos. The first photo is of a free concert by a band using traditional instruments. The next one is ziplining. Then there’s Lago (Lake) Atitlan. Then there’s the market. Then there’s a parade/campaign for better financing of mental health care and mental health education. Then there’s the inside of the church at Santiago. Then there’s this fountain with the statues of two women wearing traditional clothing and carrying clay jars for water. And finally, there’s the circle at Parque Central in Xela, our home for two months.

Things have been wonderful, yeah. I got a bit sick for a couple of days, but it’s nothing serious. Just a really bad, prolonged headache. It’s all good now. Aside from that, there’s schoolwork, and I’m moving into homestay on Sunday. I hope that works out well. I would like to do homestay for my entire second month here in Xela. I’m still not sure about what to do for the 10-day break before we move from Xela to Antigua, though. Hmm.

Day 20

I’m at day 20 out of 87 in Guatemala, currently staying at a hostel in Xela. I played futbol (for the first time) with my Habitat for Humanity teammates, our masons, and the beneficiary family. I kept reaching instinctively with my arms, volleyball-style, so I switched from defense to goalie for the second period. I blocked four shots and let four others through. Hahaha. On another day, we watched futbol live, most of us sporting Xelaju jerseys; it was Xelaju MC vs Municipal and our team won! We also visited a Mayan archeological site (Iximche), hiked up a volcano (Chikabal) that has a lake in its crater, took some free salsa lessons (at La Parranda), and basked in hot springs (at Fuentes Georginas). I also visited a Catholic church (Catedral del Espiritu Santo) and observed a town festival. It’s a lot of fun.

We’re having Spanish and Philosophy classes right now. Spanish is cool; Philosophy is making me pensive. Sociology and Political Science classes will come later. Housing arrangements are going to change; I’ll start on homestay in a couple of weeks. And then later in the program, we’re all moving to a different city, Antigua. I think a few of us are going to stay at an apartment there.

I should blog more often, eh? Otherwise I leave out all the cute or interesting or poignant little details. In the meantime, here’s what other students in the group are saying:

The World According to Sam
Emily’s Guatemalan Aventuras!
what-a-mala?
Devoushka

Travel journal, Twitter style

Thu Sept 17 5:00
I may have dreamed about a bus ride from Vancouver to Seattle. I dunno, I was asleep the whole time.

Thu Sept 17 11:50
Flight from Seattle to Houston. Continental Airlines is not for the are-we-there-yet traveler. No on-screen flight maps.

Thu Sept 17 19:24
Flight from Houston to Guatemala City. My textbook-filled, 20-pound backpack is breaking my shoulder bones.

Thu Sept 17 22:45
Why do I keep calling this apple-vodka-with-vitamin-water concoction a rum coke?

Fri Sept 18 11:30
I’m in Iximche, an archeological site. Google it, go.

Fri Sept 18 13:00
Having delicious hilachas and much-missed papaya (juice) at a truck stop en route to Quetzaltenango, aka Xela.

Fri Sept 18 15:30
Now in Xela. Will be here 8 weeks. My room rocks. Bricks, colorful wood. If only for the windows, it’s the best room in the hostel.

Fri Sept 18 18:30
Went to the bank, got a local cellphone number, bought groceries and food. All transactions done in Spanish. Win.

Sat Sept 19 08:53
Just woke up. Alarm was set for 7:45. Call time is 9:00. Phone says it’s 20:53. Duh.

Sat Sept 19 13:30
To market, to market, to buy pineapple marmalade and bread. Yeah, I’ll do real cooking, but not now.

Sat Sept 19 22:00
People, activities, life. Is this happiness I’m feeling?