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<title>Travel Blog | mateana</title>
<link>http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/mateana/</link>
<description>Travel adventures in journals and photos from mateana</description>
<language>en-us</language>
<pubDate>Mon, 20 May 2013 16:22:19 +0000</pubDate>
<lastBuildDate>Mon, 20 May 2013 16:22:19 +0000</lastBuildDate><item>
                    <title>In Cold Rain</title>
                    <description>It is midOctober now the nadir of winter in San Mateo.  Outside it'schilly.  Inside it's glacial.   I've learned to appreciate manythings this year butter fixed prices and most recently indoorheating.  Houses here aren't even insulated.   For most families thisisn't a problem because they cook on wood fire stoves.  These keeptheir kitchens relatively warm indeed most Mateanos spend the wi</description>
                    <link>http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Guatemala/Verapaz-Region/blog-337631.html</link>
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                    <title>The long and the corte</title>
                    <description>The long and the corteI came to San Mateo on the 5th of January not that it matters.  Exact dates in San Mateo are as insignificant as styles of womens pants.  Here jeans pajamas velvet britchesjust pants. Upon arrival I felt the same way about Cortes the curtain like skirts within which Mateanas hid their legs.  They all looked like cylindrical boxes splattered with too many c</description>
                    <link>http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Guatemala/blog-270669.html</link>
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                    <title>San Mateo poetry</title>
                    <description>Almost new moonOn the stoop the little thing playing with the knobs on her lower back  the almost bones they kept her from the crescent moon. In time enough the wind would scatter enough dustpast the scenefor her to go insideinside where it was safe enoughto remove her sweateryet dank she wouldnt wish to. So were the heavens overratedIt had been days since she had seen sign of them n</description>
                    <link>http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Guatemala/blog-247259.html</link>
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                    <title>Phase II Disillusionment </title>
                    <description>          Friday I taught the worst class of my life.  I hope.  No Im pretty sure that nothing could top those 90 minutes.  First my arrival 5 minutes late followed by explaining to the guffawing faces that for the next 10 minutes while I finished making photocopies they should finish their homework or talk to their neighbor or erg.  I ran out sacared my photocopias then came back a</description>
                    <link>http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Guatemala/blog-247257.html</link>
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                    <title>Double the death double the fun.  </title>
                    <description>         Yesterday morning during my 12th grade Literature class Julio the director burst in to tell us one of younger students parents had died.  School will be canceled for the rest of the day he announced.   This I assumed was to show our respect for the mourning adolescent.  I put on my most solemn pout.  And wrong again.  Why had the students begun to cheer  	You hate liter</description>
                    <link>http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Guatemala/blog-247256.html</link>
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                    <title>Barillas or Bust.  Bust</title>
                    <description>Yesterday my housemate Becca and I biked to Barillas the nearest city to San mateo which is roughly 30km away.  Our journey was possible thanks to our recent paycheck which allowed us at only 875 quetzales around 120 to purchase brand new  Maya Tour bicycles.  The town gaped.  Perhaps more than usual.  Bicycles are extravangant roughly the equivalent of a shopkeepers monthly salary.   </description>
                    <link>http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Guatemala/blog-247254.html</link>
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                    <title>Yes you told me so.   </title>
                    <description>This fall when I reluctantly explained the details of my job in Guatemala an unpleasantly large handful of people who I admire very much looked worried.  So as a new teacher youre going to be writing your own lesson plans and speaking in your third language  Guilty 	But then most of these people are frightened no matter what I do.  Youre biking to Greece  You want to be a poet </description>
                    <link>http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Guatemala/blog-247253.html</link>
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                    <title>Becoming a mateana</title>
                    <description>This evening at the Fundacin Ixtatn our office and apartment we had makeshift fiesta numero dos.  The inebriated teachers left even earlier this time.  Somewhere between 7 or 8.  The exact time I cant tell you because I no longer keep my cell phone in my pocket.  I no longer do a lot of things I did last week.  I no longer am bothered by the hour and a half I spend wandering from</description>
                    <link>http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Guatemala/blog-240093.html</link>
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                    <title>Partying. San Mateo Style</title>
                    <description>	A couple of days ago we decided that we had been drinking too much tea and too little kusha the local corn based alcohol.  It was time for a fiesta.  We decided to invite over all the teachers and everyone else in town that never Gringoed when we walked by.  It would be epic.  I spent half the afternoon deciding what I would wear finally deciding on my finest nonskimpy shirt a pai</description>
                    <link>http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Guatemala/blog-240091.html</link>
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                    <title>Washing by hand</title>
                    <description>Not having a washing machine is no big deal.  I had already 6 months of my life without one that is if you were to add up each week I was backpacking farming at a soccer tournament or a biking escapade.  The difference I suppose was that each of those weeks I either brought enough clothes along so that I never had to wash anything.  I would just become progressively grimier and grimier yet </description>
                    <link>http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Guatemala/blog-240090.html</link>
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                    <title>The Chuj and The Teaching of the Chuj</title>
                    <description>Finally after numerous hours of weeping under my bed beside the cockroaches I managed to pull myself out and over to the computer to recount my first day of teaching.  Im alive just barely.  Actually that dramatic opening was entirely facetious.  Thanks to all your brilliant comments my first day went well surprisingly well.  I introduced myself sans grammar mistakes.  I laid down the law</description>
                    <link>http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Guatemala/blog-236832.html</link>
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                    <title>Productivity guatemalan style</title>
                    <description>Yesterday morning at 800 the teachers at the Yinhabil Naben school were supposed to meet to assign class subjects and schedules.  Having slept through our cell phone alarms the three American teachers and I rushed out of the house at 820.  Mortifying.  How could we be late would be late on our first day  We rushed up to the stairs into the dusty classroomwhich was empty.  Had the othe</description>
                    <link>http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Guatemala/blog-234754.html</link>
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                    <title>First night in San Mateo Ixtatan </title>
                    <description>Beneath a web of vines she memorized the patchwork of the stars.  This she did three thousand miles north three thousand miles from the skyno awayher body reflected three thousand timesthat body the stars reflected.  But they had escaped the night those starsfled from the fog how audacious it was the icing of fog.   That night it had draped itself over the flaccid buildings over the</description>
                    <link>http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Guatemala/blog-234753.html</link>
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                    <title>Learning how to litter</title>
                    <description>As I child when I craved junk food my physician mother would hand mesomething fat free and organic promising I would appreciate thissomeday that I when everyone around me had clogged arteries anddiabetes. I was always skeptical of this especially on weekdays.Back then my parents would let me have a candy bar only once a weekon sundays as if chocolate were a religious experience.One blustery</description>
                    <link>http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Guatemala/blog-234750.html</link>
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                    <title>And how do you like your chicken bus</title>
                    <description>And how do you like your chicken busToday was foggy enough for me to finally leave Huehuetenango for San Mateo Ixtatan the mountain town in which Ill be spending the next eleven months.   All morning I prepared myself for this ascent.  For breakfast I ate the best piece of dulce de leche cake had my last double cappuccino and bought the two best bottles of alcohol I could find.  Of course be</description>
                    <link>http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Guatemala/Western-Highlands/Todos-Santos-Cuchmatan/blog-233280.html</link>
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                    <title>Guatemalade</title>
                    <description>For those of you who dont speak French guatemalade Guatemala  malade sick is a catchy term invented by a friend of mine from Toulouse who had gringa disease every day of her two month stay here.  Sadly my guatemalade days began yesterday at sunset an hour or so before I was intended to meet up with some authentic Huehuetecos I met through couchsurfing.com.  Being sick is for sissies.  I t</description>
                    <link>http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Guatemala/blog-232876.html</link>
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                    <title>Way way in Culture Shock</title>
                    <description>I'm writing from an internet cafe in huehuetenango sipping ona tiny styrofoam cup of coffee so sweet i already have diabetes.  Iarrived safely after a lovely 24 hour plane to plane to bus to busjourney with my two 50 pound sacks of books and 40 pound carry onstill in tact.  This was great and being energized from minimallyawkward arrival I refused to sleep and set out to explore theminicity.  </description>
                    <link>http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Guatemala/blog-232875.html</link>
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                    <title>excited not terrified.  </title>
                    <description>So I'm leaving in 6 days for San Mateo and yes one thing off the checklist.  I've created this lovely blog which apparently is more for travelers than crazy people who are staying in one cold place for an entire year to work.  These past days have been fun in anticipation of trips to REI for fleeces and trader joes for massive quantities of peanut butter.  I haven't left any of you yet so I </description>
                    <link>http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/California/Marin/blog-230412.html</link>
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