Next Stop: Guatemala!

           

           Sorry the blog is late, we’ve been adjusting to the new time zone , looking for a house and starting work so I haven't had much time.

Guatemala’s been great so far! We arrived here very early Friday morning. This first week we have been staying in Antigua, a very touristy town that a lot of people visit about 45 minutes away from the capitol. Every time when we come to Guatemala on the short trips we stay in Antigua, but this time starting next week we’re going to stay in Pastores, which is a smaller town 15 minutes from Antigua. We’ve already done a bunch of cool things. On Sunday we went ziplining! We had to drive up a mountain to the place where we would do it in the middle of a forest above a huge coffee farm. There were eight different ziplines that got longer each time. I’ve done a zipline like it before, in Guatemala City, but I thought this one was better because of an incredible view of the volcano Agua. That night we had dinner at Casa Escobar, a steakhouse, one of my favorite restaurants. This was the first time in three months that I had eaten a kind of meat that was not chicken so it was especially good. My favorite thing about that place is their horchata. Horchata is a rice milk drink with cinnamon and sugar. Casa Escobar has one of the best. The plan after dinner was to go home, but Fuego, an active volcano, erupted and we had to get in a car to leave Antigua. Just kidding, but the volcano did erupt. One of our friends asked if we wanted to go closer to the volcano to see it better and, of course, we said yes. Nature is so cool. There was tons and tons of lava shooting out of the volcano. Erbin, my dad’s partner, told us that from the tip of the volcano the lava was going up 300 to 500 meters (900 to 1500 feet!). Standing there in the cold, watching the volcano erupt I got a feeling similar to the one in the Himalayas, like I was one with nature. The stars were very clear that night so in addition to the volcano we could see lots of constellations. It was a spectacular sight that I would like to keep in my mind for a long time. We’ve also just walked around Antigua a lot, getting a coffee, (not me) or looking at the market. That was my favorite day so far because it reminded me of the last time we came here with a bunch of my friends, not to mention it was really fun.

            On Monday we met up with the Young Dreamers! I already know some of them because I come so often, but a week a year to get to know somebody is not enough, so they’re still kind of strangers for me. The village where we go up to work is called Vuelta Grande. We work at the elementary school there. We met up with the Young Dreamers at the school and then we went on a small hike up the mountain to an area where we could hang out. On the way up we had to talk with the Young Dreamers to learn two new things about two of them. I think it was a smart exercise because it made us talk to each other and get to know one another. I talked to two Young Dreamers whose names were Marvin and Juan. It’s so much easier to get to know somebody when you actually speak their language. In India we made friendships with the Young Dreamers but because of the language barrier, it wasn’t too deep. I enjoyed talking to Marvin and Juan, learning about what their life is like and telling them how mine is. When we got to the top of a hill we started kicking around the ball. Soccer is Guatemala’s main sport so every kid plays and they’re all pretty good. We started a full on tournament with them with four teams. After the tournament, in which my team got second, we sat down to have some snacks and a picnic. We all talked about ourselves to get to know each other better. All around I think the activity was a really good idea because it immediately got us talking with the Young Dreamers instead of just working. If we would have just started working right away on the first day, we wouldn’t have talked that much or connected.

            The predominant culture in Guatemala is indigenous Mayan. On Wednesday we went to a Mayan culture center where a women’s co-op did a presentation on their customs and traditions. Whenever we come on the shorter trips we also do this presentation so I’ve seen it many times. I‘ve almost memorized it. They first talked about the purpose of the co-op. They do it to preserve their culture, but also to provide income for their families. The indigenous Mayan women wear traditional clothing, but it’s slowly becoming less and less common for women to wear it and the men still wear it in only three parts of the country. There’s a lot of discrimination against indigenous people in Guatemala so if you are wearing the traditional clothes you are immediately recognized as indigenous. In the past, indigenous men wouldn’t get jobs so they quit wearing it so they can work. We learned about the women’s clothing. It has three main parts: el huipil (the blouse) el cincho (the belt) and el corte (the skirt). The type of weaving that the co-op does is called brocade, where everything they make is double sided. To make one huipil it takes the women 6 months to complete working 6 hours a day. 6 months! That’s a very long time to be making a piece of clothing. It would require a lot of patience. I don’t think I’d last a day. There are three stages to the weaving. The first to is to make a ball of string on a contraption called a bolador (spool). When they get the thread it’s all tangled and messy so they get each individual thread apart to form a ball. The next step is to unwind the ball on a plank with pegs so that it makes a loop the length of the weaving they’re making. Once they’ve finished unwinding the ball they begin the last step which is the actual weaving. That’s, of course, the longest step. They use those three steps for everything they make and they first learned how to do them when they were only five or six years old. We also learned about the Mayan marriage rituals. My favorite part is how the boy and girl become boyfriend and girlfriend because I think it’s pretty funny. If a single girl is walking around the streets with a sute (a multi-use piece of clothing) on her shoulder and a boy likes her, he will try to take the sute off her shoulder. Usually the girl tugs back a little but then if she likes the boy then she lets go. That means, with their parent’s permission, that they will be boyfriend and girlfriend. Now, what if the boy takes the sute with brute force? Well, then if the girl doesn’t like him at all she will throw dirt in his face. After a while of being boyfriend and girlfriend the boy would ask the girl to get married and, again with the parents permission, they would get engaged. It’s usually 12 to 18 months before they get married though. You’re probably wondering why. The girl needs to make a super nice sute for her mother-in-law, who will use it as a shawl, and a scarf for her father-in-law. The sute will take around 10 months and the scarf will take around 3 months. Then they will get married. First they have the ceremony where the couple gets married and the guests say some some words, kind of like at home. After the ceremony everybody celebrates and the party usually lasts 10 to 12 hours. That’s what a Mayan wedding looks like. I really like learning about a new culture and I’m eager to keep learning over the next few months. I hope you learned some new things too.

Next week I hope to write more about the work we’re doing here.