Parterning with the Young Dreamers & Some Mayan History

            Just like in India when we did the hygiene campaign and the community meeting about child labor we have now started planning a community service project with the Young Dreamers here in Guatemala. Actually, there are three projects. The first one, the biggest one, is an environmental clean-up campaign. In that project we have several smaller ones, we’re going to clean four of the pilas in Vuelta Grande and El Hato, do another rally through the streets, put up posters and signs made out of wood around the two towns to remind people to keep it clean, and we’re even going to do skits in the schools again. That’s the one we’re working on right now since it’ll take time. The second project is to fix and paint the playground in El Hato since nobody’s done anything with it in a long time. That project is the easiest and I believe that all of us working together we can finish it in one day. Our third and final project is to find kids who aren’t going to school and try to figure out why, and if we can get them in school. These three projects are all very important in their own ways and I’m looking forward to seeing them carried out. I’m especially excited for the rally and campaign. Hopefully it will be as successful as what we did in India. I’m in the skits group again. We’re doing one about the importance not littering, and keeping the streets clean. I’m really excited to do projects with the Young Dreamers here in Guatemala. I will keep you all posted on how it goes.

Over the weekend we went to see ancient Mayan ruins at a place called Iximche. Iximche means tree of corn, Ixim, corn, and che, tree. Iximche was the capital of the Kaqchikel Mayas in the post-classic era. Iximche was built in 1464 and was destroyed by the Spaniards in 1526. The Kaqchikeles had an alliance with the Quiches where they lived in the same towns and had the same capital even though the Quiches were kind of ruling over the Kaqchikeles. Eventually the Quiches asked them to leave, and when I say asked they actually asked since they had an alliance. The Kaqchikeles went searching for a new home. They started constructing Iximche and a few years later they moved in marching and celebrating all the way. Since during that time there was lots of tension between the different Mayas, they built the city in a super strategic position. It was all surrounded by super high cliffs except for the one entrance. The entrance was blocked by a moat that had crocodiles and snakes. Inside the moat in the capital part of the city only lived four royal families. There were 5 plazas inside because the biggest family had two of the homes. Basically all of the plazas had the exact same things. They all had the palace, two temples, the moon temple and the sun temple, facing east and west. There were altars for sacrificing animals and sometimes humans. And every plaza had a small stadium for sports. The sport that they played, at least in Iximche, consists of scoring the ball into hoops. They used their shoulders, elbows, hips and thighs/knees to hit the ball into the hoops. There’s been no evidence to show that they used their hands or their feet. Think about how hard it would be! Sports were very serious to the Mayas and a lot of times they sacrificed the players when they finished. Sometimes they sacrificed the losing team or sometimes they sacrificed the best player from the winning team as a great offering. One thing that I found very interesting about Iximche is that Guatemala is named after it. You’re probably wondering how that is. Well, when the Spaniards arrived to Iximche they were brought by the Aztecs who spoke Nahuatl. The Spaniard leader asked where they were and the Aztecs told them in Nahuatl, place of many trees and the Spaniards heard it as Guatemala. Actually, names of a lot of places and things are in Nahuatl. I found that very interesting that it wouldn’t be in a Mayan language. I really liked Iximche because lately I’ve been really interested by the Mayan history and culture. I just finished reading a great book called The Mayan Life.

Semuc Champey - A Paradise

This is a bonus blog because I just have to tell you about this amazing place we just visited.

Last week we went to Semuc Champey/Lanquin!  On Sunday we started our trip and went on a bus ride for about 4 hours before stopping for lunch. After lunch we drove for another hour and a half when we got to a quetzal reserve called Biotopo del Quetzal. We went on a two hour hike through the cloud forest looking for quetzales. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any. Even though we didn’t see what we were there for we still had a very nice hike where we saw a waterfall and some pretty cool plants and trees. My favorite part was the waterfall because at that time it was very, very foggy so it looked like we were at the edge of the world! I got a feeling of peace when I was standing there, almost as if I was really at the edge of the world. After the quetzal reserve we drove another two hours until we got to Coban, which is a big city in Guatemala where we spent the night. That’s actually where my dad lived when he was in Peace Corps. The next day we drove about another two hours until we got to Lanquin. Lanquin is a city famous for its caves and beautiful river. We went into the cave where we walked for a couple hours. We each held a candle so we could see the different rock formations that they had discovered inside. We also got lucky because even though it wasn’t the time to see them we got to see some bats hanging from the ceiling! That was the first time I had been in a cave (from what I can remember) and it was a really cool experience.

         That same day we made it to Semuc Champey. One of the first things I saw upon arriving was a beautiful river. If you know me you wouldn’t be surprised to know that I immediately had a strong urge to jump in. Luckily, my wish came true. Really close to the hotel where we were staying there was a bridge that was 30 to 35 feet high (like 10 to 12 meters) where some people were jumping off. When I first got to the bridge I felt pretty scared, especially when it was my turn to jump. Now, I’m not scared of heights at all but from that immense height I felt how people feel when they’re actually scared of heights. I was standing there while Juan, the assistant director of the gap year program, was battling the current waiting for me. Suddenly, I just jumped and was in a freefall. At first I couldn’t do anything but fall, but right as I was nearing the water I put myself in pencil form and plunged in. After the first time, I was perfectly fine and I went as many times as I could. What I learned after that was that even though something is scary to you (and I’m not scared of heights) sometimes you just have to jump, whether you’re scared of heights, you’re scared of failing, or you’re simply scared of spiders. Take the leap, face your fear head on, you might even pee your pants, but just do it.

The next day in the morning we took a thirty minute hike to a lookout point called “the Mirador.” The mirador looks out over the seven natural pools that are called Semuc Champey after which the town is named. When we got there I was the first one of our group to see it and I was awestruck. It was by far one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. When I regained my breath I called the rest of the group over and watched their reactions. We had to just stand there for a while because it was amazing. It reminded everyone that there are lots of beautiful places like Semuc Champey tucked into corners of the world that we don’t know about, or at least, I don’t know about. We then hiked down for another 20 minutes until we got to those same pools! They were amazing, with water as clear as glass. Each pool is separated by a natural barrier of stone and you go down pool by pool. Sometimes there’s a natural type of water slide where you slide to the next pool, or sometimes you can jump to the next one. I had a lot of fun going from pool to pool and just being in that amazing environment. I was sad to leave.

After lunch at the hotel it was time to explore some more caves. These ones were filled with water because of a river running through them. It was way different than what I imagined it to be. I thought it would be similar to the last caves where they were wide open just that this time there would be some water at our feet. Instead they were some pretty narrow caves where most of the time the water got over my head. There was a rope where we pulled ourselves along because it was hard to swim with heavy shoes. Also we had to climb ladders and jump off of rocks in a lot of places, it was like we were adventurers.  Surprisingly, about 1/2 of the way I was leading the pack. Carrying my candle, showing the way. I was well in front of everybody. That was super fun because I got to see everything first and then tell everybody what was coming. Too soon, we stopped to turn back. At the and there was a spot where you could climb to jump into a deep spot in the water and almost everyone did it. On the way back we got to go down a waterslide that was basically a hole that you fell through. It was weird because it was very short so when you got down you didn’t know if you were done or if you had to swim somewhere. When we finally got out everybody was relieved to get into daylight even though some people, not going to say names, wanted to do it again. We ended the day with a relaxing tubing ride where we freezed our butts off. The trip was amazing and I felt I could spend my whole life in Semuc Champey. I think I can officially declare it one of my favorite spots on earth.

On Friday, I’ll tell you all about our next work projects.

Goodbye 2015, Hello 2016! Continuing Our Work in Guatemala

    As you know, for more than a month now the group has been working at the school in Vuelta Grande, Guatemala getting it ready for the kids to come back from their vacation and see a nice, vibrant and lively school. I can tell you, it looks great. Just this last week two other groups came for a week or two to help volunteer. The gap year group had actually gone home for the holidays so we still had volunteering while they were gone and it was great. We’ve advanced a lot in painting especially. Almost the whole school has a fresh coat of paint and in most places brand new murals. The soccer field area has new murals of different sports all around it and the two classrooms we were working on are all painted with a bright green color and each have a mural inside. The playground area also had a major remodel. There was super long grass all over the area that we cleared with hoes, pickaxes and machetes. I used the machete and it was awesome! We also painted more murals. This time of animals, One of the girls from the week long trip even painted some beautiful quetzales. We also now have filtered drinking water for the kids in school. Another girl in the week-long program fundraised enough money to buy eco filters for every classroom. One of the biggest projects of all is to build a classroom! A group of engineering students from a community college in California called Cabrillo College came for about two weeks. They built the foundation and started building the walls. We’re going to continue working on the classroom (with a professional guiding us of course) and hopefully have it done when the kids come. The same engineering group also installed five new water tanks, adding to the three they installed last year, with 2500 L each (two of them with 1000 L.) They put these in two different spots, above the school and in the middle of town so that people could collect water from there instead of walking an hour to a natural spring. Trucks from Antigua come once or twice a month to fill them up. This last month has been full of great volunteering and one thing that I found really cool was that three groups of volunteers were here at the same time. That means a lot of people gave their time to fix up a school and in doing so, to help kids have a better time while learning. To top it all off, we have added 10 new Young Dreamers (all girls) to the scholarship group in Guatemala. There are now 33 in Guatemala.

    I can’t believe it’s already 2016! For me at least, 2015 went by very fast. It was a great year with a lot of amazing things, and I’m really looking forward to what this year has to bring. Last year I graduated from elementary school (5th grade), which was huge because it was the first part of my school career. Fifth grade was an awesome year where I learned a lot and had some really cool experiences. Looking back I want to thank my teachers from last year for making the effort to make school fun and also teaching so much to me. I also started this trip in 2015. This trip has taught me so much about different parts of the world, different cultures, different customs and traditions, different people, so many things that I wouldn’t ever have known without going to those countries. I definitely wouldn’t have learned all that in school (sorry teachers). Last year was an incredible year where I grew a lot.

    Now I’m just thinking forward to this year. We’re going to finish our work here in Guatemala, not to mention going to some pretty cool places like Semuc Champey (some beautiful rivers running through caves) and Tikal (the pyramids and ancient ruins of the Mayan capital.) I’m also excited to keep learning about the Mayan culture. Then we’ll head off to Costa Rica for the third leg of our journey, where I’ll learn about their history and their customs. Even though I’m excited to continue this awesome adventure I can’t wait to go home and see all my family and friends. I’ll also officially start going to Middle School in 2016! I’m looking forward to starting seventh grade and actually going to a school, sitting in a class with other kids, I’ve missed that. This year I have a whole lot of things to look forward to and I really am eager to meet them head on. I hope everybody had a great 2015 and I wish you a great 2016!
          This weekend we’re going to Semuc Champey and I’ve never been but I’ve heard it’s really beautiful so I’m excited to go.

Young Dreamers Graduate and We Celebrate Christmas with a Boom

            Last Friday night we had a graduation party for three of the Young Dreamers that graduated in October! (The school year here goes from January to October.) All three were girls and part of the first ten to graduate. Now girls have several graduates to look up to that have shown them a path, so a huge accomplishment. The party itself was really fun and I felt we connected with all the Young Dreamers a little bit more that night. We started off by eating the traditional platter called pepian which is a bunch of cooked vegetables and spices mashed into a sauce which is over chicken and vegetables like carrots, potatoes and guisquil. After dinner we all started chatting but people started hitting the balloon around. What started as a simple game of pass soon turned into a war with people throwing balloons at each other and popping them in each other's face. Everyone was scrambling to yank balloons of their own of the ceiling and to cover their ears from the noise. That was really fun but, as you would think, we ran out of balloons very quickly. The balloons stopped and it was time for words. The graduates all spoke about how grateful they were to everybody who helped them achieve their dream and graduate and how special it was to them. The parents also spoke about how proud they were of their kids and grateful that they could get an education. Afterwards my dad touched on how special and amazing the moment was, celebrating the graduation of three girls out of high school that otherwise would have had to start working after 6th grade. A great party with an even greater significance.

Here in Guatemala you feel the Christmas spirit a little differently. They celebrate on the 24th, Nochebuena, and stay up late into the night. They don’t put as much lights and decoration outside on the street, but there’s a lot inside the houses. Each house is decorated by a nativity scene, some bigger than others. So far all the ones I’ve seen have been really nice with elaborate little people and animals. Until midnight on the 24th, they don’t put baby Jesus out though, because he wasn’t born yet. In Guatemala they also have the tradition of the posadas from the 16 of December up to the 24. The posadas are a reenactment of when Mary was pregnant and she and Joseph were looking for a place to stay. People go around singing and playing music until they get to a pre-designated house where they move the statues of Joseph and Mary for the night. We actually got invited to one. Since our friend Hugo was receiving a posada, he invited my family to come along. When we got to his house we had to go pick up the statues of Joseph and Mary from the previous house where they were the night before. When we got there we got handed all the lanterns and the musical instruments like a flute or a drum. Anybody who wants to can come along and the family from the night before walked with us. Along the way we picked up a few people so there was a pretty big group walking and singing. I actually got a chance to hold the platform with Joseph and Mary on my shoulder and it was pretty special. When we got to Hugo’s house they did a song where Joseph and Mary are asking to stay in the house and some people inside answer. This is a big tradition in the Catholic religion, so like in India when we saw Hindu traditions, now we participated in one that is Christian.

One thing that’s really popular and that everyone does is shoot fireworks and firecrackers. Pretty much all of December they burn, especially as it gets closer and closer to Nochebuena. Around Christmas you can stay awake late into the night hearing music and drums, and also booms and kapows! The 24th was awesome! We went to my mom’s childhood friend’s house and then later my great-great uncle’s house and we had a blast. Before midnight, the adults eat and talk, and the kids play games and watch movies. We had a lot of fun at the first house, then we left to go to my great-great uncle’s house for midnight. At first when we were at his house we just talked and told jokes. The point is to try to have fun and be with friends and family until 12:00. At midnight everybody gave hugs and said Merry Christmas. The traditional food to eat are tamales, but we ate turkey and salad. After dinner my brother, cousins and I all went out to burn little firecrackers and sparklers. It was really fun, we did a war type thing where we threw some little poppers that just made noise at each other. We did that until about 2:00 in the morning! By then everyone was getting really tired so we sat down and played some board games. The adults kept talking for another hour and a half, but still we kids hadn’t gone to sleep. I finally went to sleep at 4:00 in the morning! Here Christmas sure is different than in the US, but it’s still special and fun.

I had a great Christmas and I hope you did too. This week, we’re off from our Spanish class and home school, so we’re visiting friends and volunteering up in Vuelta Grande to continue getting the school ready.

I hope you all have a Happy New Year!

Swimming Between Volcanoes, an Unusual Religion & My New Routine

Last weekend we went to Lago Atitlan and Chichicastenango. Lago Atitlan is a big lake about three hours from Antigua surrounded by volcanoes. There are tons of little towns surrounding the lake and we always go to a town called Panajachel. When we got there we didn't spend too much time in Panajachel. Usually when we come on the short trips we have less time so we just spend the day there, but this time we were staying the night. We dropped off our things at the hotel and then we headed to the lake to go on a boat for a mini cruise. Because we have less time on the day trips we go to a town that is closer to Panajachel, but this time we headed to a town that was on the opposite side of the lake. About halfway through, the boat stopped and we got to jump off the side into the water! Since it was a double-decker boat we could jump from up high. That was definitely the highlight off my day, to throw yourself off the railing and see the water rushing up at you and the wind blowing your face. Then to crash into the water and sink down in the midst of bubbles, I loved it. So much, that I jumped eight times while everybody else jumped three or four. When we had all dried off we were almost to Santiago, the biggest town on the lake. In Santiago there's a pretty big market but we didn't do any shopping since we thought we would have other opportunities. Then we had a tour of the city.

In Santiago they also have one of the four Maximon (pronounced Mashimon) dolls in Guatemala. Maximon is a saint of a religion that is an off-shoot of Catholicism, a mix of Catholicism and Mayan traditions. We were there when they were doing their rituals and it was very interesting to watch. First they drank a whole lot of alcohol and then they put some on the doll. They also lit a bunch of candles that they put around the doll and in the doll's hand. Different color candles are for different things, but I don't know for what exactly. After lighting the candles they started saying words and swinging incense, but they spoke Cakchiquel (a Mayan language) so we didn't understand. It was a really interesting and different religion that not too many people practice any more.

We then continued our tour of Santiago on the back of a pickup! All of us hopped in the back and I thought it was pretty fun. We went to the plaza, the center of town where the church is and learned a little bit about what happened there. From the 1960s to the 1990s there was civil war in Guatemala, a very bad civil war. We didn’t learn that much about it, but we learned there was a massacre in that plaza around 25 years ago. It was super sad hearing and reading about, I don’t want to get into details, but a lot of people died. I was thinking afterwards, how could someone willingly shoot innocent people, how could you live with that, I just don’t understand how it happens. The way back to Panajachel went by uneventful, and apart from a great dinner at a great restaurant, so did the rest of the night. I was really glad that we got to have more time there because there’s so much to see that we usually don’t see.

The next day we went to Chichicastenango, which is a pretty big town with a humongous market. The market is famous in Guatemala for all its colors and its diversity in products. When we got there we were immediately immersed in people trying to sell us things. At first we just walked until we got to the church, which was going to be our meeting spot since people were splitting up. The church was pretty big and was divided into two sections. Before, the Indigenous people would sit on one side and the priest would speak Mayan languages, while the mixed (Spanish and Mayan) sat on the other side with another priest speaking Spanish. After visiting the church my mom, dad, brother and I went off to look at the market. The first section we walked through had a lot of food. There were lots of fruits and vegetables of all kinds and there were small stands with things similar to quesadillas and tacos. When we kept going deeper we got to the handicraft section. There were a lot of jade and obsidian things there and it was really cool. There were also a lot of things made out of wood. This was my favorite section because it was full of things that really interested me. I’ve always been fascinated by rock and wood products. I ended up getting a necklace made of jade with my Mayan symbol on it. I’m Toj, which means shark in Cakchiquel. My brother Carlos is Kan, but I don’t know what that means. After the handicraft section we got to the traditional clothes. I wasn’t really that interested in that section, but I still thought it was interesting to see the traditional clothes. I actually found some similarities in them to Indian clothes, especially the men’s clothes. Even though they were different, for sure, they had some of the same textures and patterns. By the time we had finished seeing the clothes we had almost completed a full circle. This market was like the markets in India. They have a bunch of little shops that sell different (or the same so there’s competition) products. This was totally new for me/us because back home it’s not like that. This was a really cool market with lots of cool things and I’m glad we got to visit it since I hadn’t before.

Last time I said that we had to move out of our house and I forgot to add that we are in a new one. Our friends in the US have a house here but they’ve lived in the US for a long time now so they let us stay in it. Their names are Tina and Tono. Thanks to them! It’s a really nice house and we’re lucky to have it. Some other friends in Antigua have a spare car that they let us use, so we’re all set. My brother and I also have a Spanish teacher come every morning. My mom and dad really wanted us to come out of this with fluent Spanish so for an hour and a half we each have Spanish class. All the volunteers in the gap year program also have Spanish class, but for four hours. The entire morning! I really like my teacher and I’m learning a lot. Even though the Spanish is really good for me, now I have extra work. I was still doing Spanish class in India, but not as long and I definitely didn’t speak as much. I also have homework! For the first time in 6 months! We have a good routine here and we’re already as comfortable as we were at the end of India.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas!