Daily Life in Guatemala

Hello from Guatemala!
I have been here for just over four weeks now and everything is going tops. Most recently I spent two weeks at a spanish language school in a rural area. I slept at the school but ate my meals with Guatemalan families from a nearby community. This was a really eye opening experience, as I was out in the country side and living life like a true Guatemalan (apart from the red hair and the fact I cant speak spanish).

The communities out there are really poor - one house where I was eating there were 14 people living in a 3 room house. And another family that I got to know had 11 kids - luckily most of them had grown up and moved out because I cant imagine what the chaos would be like. The diet was very simple with lots of beans, vegetables and tortillas and you might get meat once a week if you were very lucky.

I was also able to go on a hike to Lake Chicabal, which is a lake in the crater of a volcano. This is a sacred site for the indigenous Mayan people and I was lucky enough to see a religious Mayan ceremony there, which involved a lot of fire and a lot of chanting in one of the most beautiful religious sites I have ever seen.

So after my four weeks in Guatemala I have come to notice a number of cultural differences that I thought I would share with you all.

Cultural difference 1: Plastic bags and screwdrivers are acceptable toys for small children.
Cultural difference 2: A bus is never full until there are 3-4 people on all the seats, the aisle is jampacked and people are hanging out the door. I spent the scariest 20 minutes of my life standing on the bottom step of the bus entrance with one arm inside the bus and the other arm outside the bus.
Cultural difference 3: Volcanic explosions are an everyday part of life and should not be worried about. The volcano in the photo explodes about every 20 minutes, but you never see any Guatemalans running in the opposite direction while screaming at the tops of their lungs (as I am inclined to do).
Cultural difference 4: Being part of the Mayan religion is pretty cool, because your church is a lake and your best clothes are colourful bathrobes (check out the photos). The coolness of the religion is, however, somewhat negated by the hundreds of years of oppresion and discrimination which the Mayans have suffered.

Keep smiling everyone!

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