Other People’s Stories #1 Written Saturday November 7, 2009 Before I left for Guatemala, one of the ideas I had was to everyday write down the tale of someone I met that day. It wasn’t important whether the person was Guatemalan, a traveler, or a person I met in some other way. All that was important was that they had an interesting life story. Well, I had forgotten about this idea for a long while—until now. About a month ago I made a friend at my school, Jason. We had a mutual interest in motorcycles and dreams of riding down the [View Full Entry]

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The Death of Lake Atitlan I recently watched the new Star Trek movie; in this movie, a young Dr. Spock watches as his planet is completely destroyed. But this theme of planets being completely destroyed is not new to Star Trek (or Star Wars); no, this is a reoccurring theme in many of the series’ episodes. One species of beings decides that it wants to completely destroy the planet and home of another species. As a kid, I enjoyed watching Star Trek and felt challenged by its themes. In one episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” Capitan Picard discovers the [View Full Entry]

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Lifeguard, are you sure those waves aren’t dangerous? So I finally made it to the beach in Guatemala. Between my four visits here, I have been here for 19 weeks. You would think that in that time I would have made it to the beach sooner, but, no, I haven’t. But I have heard plenty about the beaches here—THEY ARE DANGEROUS. There are stories of undertows. And every time someone comes back from a beach I ask them about the water. I never believed in the undertows. From living in Los Angeles, I know about rip currents, and I know about [View Full Entry]

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I Wish I Had another Plastic Chair I wish I had another plastic chair. Eight people live in my house, and our house has a total of four chairs and I think four stools. If you do the math that means that we have enough seating for everyone in our house. But here is the problem: I don’t like sitting on the stools; they are just not comfortable. And…those chairs and stools are spread out all over the house. One of the chairs is mine—I am sitting in it right now, it is my desk chair in my room. Another chair [View Full Entry]

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Choco Crema de Maní Banano licuados con Leche de Soya y Fibra Motorcycle adventures. Cliff diving. Excursions to ancient ruins. Waterfalls, parties, hot springs, volcanoes. These are the things I feel expected to write about. But this is not my life right now. Sure, I hiked La Muela (a volcano-formed mountain with naturally-heated saunas built into the ground in the middle of no-where) twice in the last week. And Saturday and Sunday I took motorcycle rides to neighboring pueblos. Saturday I went to San Marcos, a 27 mile ride through the mountains with a beautiful valley overlook, and Sunda [View Full Entry]

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My New Best Friend; or The Sexuality of Loneliness; or Mom & Dad; or Sarita; or Salsa Rosa; or Adventures in San Pedro; or Volcán Santa María and the Mirador So, I have seven ideas for blogs; above are the titles. Some of them, such as “Adventures in San Pedro” “Salsa Rosa” or “Volcán Santa María and the Mirador” would mostly recount activities and events. “The Sexuality of Loneliness,” which will probably never get written, would mostly recount they ways in which I see intercultural relationships manifesting themselves and the consequences of [View Full Entry]

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“How do I weave the ordinary into a story worth writing about; worth reading?” This was the thought that ran through my head as I rode back on a chicken bus from Las Fuentes Georginas. Fuentes Georginas is a natural hot springs about forty-five minutes outside of Xela. The water is heated by the volcano and a few pools of stone have been constructed around the fountainhead. To get there we need to take a 25 minute chicken bus to the pueblo of Zunil. (For those of you who don’t know, a chicken bus is a decommissioned American school bus. The [View Full Entry]

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The official name of the town I live in is Quetzaltenango. The quetzal is the state bird of Guatemala, and tenango simply means, “the place of”. Now, none of the locals call this city, dubbed the place of the Quetzal, Quetzaltenango. No, instead they call it Xela (pronounced Shay-la). Maybe this is because the town is 60% indigenous and Xela is the traditional Mayan name. Or maybe it is simply because Quetzaltenango is just too long of a word to say. Or, my favorite reason, maybe the human population in “the place of the Quetzal” has gotten so large that the [View Full Entry]

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So, I am throwing myself a going away party and I know what you are thinking, either: (a) Isn’t someone else supposed to do that for you, (b) I thought you left 2 months ago, or (c) Give me the damn details of this party, so that I can be there (a) Well, to answer (a) I will say, “No, I am taking charge of this party”. That may be because I can only expect my friends to throw me one giant party a year (all of you involved in throwing Phil Phest, thank you). Or it may be that anyone [View Full Entry]

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So yesterday, Tuesday, August 7th, I went to play soccer with about 8 other students from my Spanish School (Celas Maya) 1 teacher (Byron), and an employee of Celas. Byron is always trying to get students together to play soccer, and he was able to rent an artificial turf field. The field was smaller than a normal field, but it was covered with a roof which protected us from the usual rain. At the field we encountered some Guatemalans (I think they were friends of Byron’s, but I am unsure) and they played soccer with us too. We had 3 teams [View Full Entry]

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