RachelGood

So, after about 4 weeks of living in Guatemala and experiencing all the great things this country has to offer, I have decided someone needs to document their traffic laws. That way any new drivers in Guatemala can have some sort of basis to go off of when learning to drive, and foreign drivers can get accustomed to the cultural differences. 1. honk to tell other drivers to get out of the way 2. honk to let pedestrians know you are coming 3. honk to let other cars know when you are passing them on the shoulder driving on a cliff at 9000 km/hr (we use the metric system here in Guatemala, so you have to learn how to convert from miles - kilometers) 4. honk to say hello to friends you pass along the road ... read more

The internet connection here seriously kills my soul. I feel like the Mayan gods of technology are working against me very diligently. In other news, I discovered a bakery today called Xelapan and I can now safely say that I will return to the US weighing at least 93982 pounds. I got an eclair for the equivalent of about 40 cents and proceeded to bathe myself in powdered sugar. SO GOOD. These past few days have been relatively uneventful, but fun. Most of my time has been spent eating tacos, actually. There are two taco places right down the road and they make the most magical tacos I have ever experienced. They are made with these little corn tortillas and come with all sorts of unidentifiable spicy sauces. I actually can't remember the last time we've ... read more

I have been slacking on updating, but here is my attempt to write what I've been doing the last few days! Thurs: Hilda and I went to two more communities, though they are all starting to run together at this point. The first one we went to was up in the mountains, and they spoke the Mayan language Mam, which Hilda doesn't speak, so she brought a translator. They spoke a little bit of spanish, but not much, so it was difficult to communicate. It wasn't really a problem, I just wandered along behind the group as they went from house and house and took pictures of the amazing scenery. The kids there were really cute, they wanted to see the pictures I was taking and wanted me to take pictures of them so they could ... read more

I got my wireless to connect! Weirdly enough, if you enter a $ sign before the password when trying to connect to wireless, it will make it work. Hurrah for Jessie's internet and google! So this morning I woke up at 8:46, which is by far the earliest I've woken up in approximately 39028493 years. It wasn't even that impressive because I'm still on home-time, meaning it was 10:46 in my head, but that's still the earliest I've woken up in a long time. And that was the result of about 12 alarms. Anyways, I met with Hilda at 9, the woman in charge of AMA, which is the organization that organizes women's meetings in nearby towns. Basically, the Guatemalan civil war, which lasted until the mid-1990s, led to huge human rights abuses, especially against women. ... read more