do as the mayans do

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 see themselves. Hilda had problems with this town though because I guess there were a lot more women that thought they needed stoves than there were stoves available to be built, so Hilda had to decide which people were worse off and needed the stoves the most. A lot of the women in this town already had stoves, but most of them had something wrong, like one of the burners didn't work or the stove didn't ventilate properly. Anyways, I guess Hilda telling them that not everyone would get a stove caused conflicts, though I couldn't really follow along in the discussion because it switched rapidly between Mam and spanish. The next place we went was directly off the side of the highway - we pulled off the road, got out of the car, and climbed up this really steep and narrow path made out of stones and sandbags through the woods until we got to this house that was literally built into the side of the mountain. Then we climbed up the path until we got to another house, then another. It was this tiny little community of four or five houses just build right into the mountain. When we were up there it started pouring, which made for a fun journey back down. But we made it!
Fri: the town we went to this day was way, way, WAY up in the mountains. It took about 2 hours of driving on windy, bumpy, kind of terrifying unpaved roads to get up there. the views were beautiful but i have a pretty impressive bruise on my right shoulder from the seatbelt - there were some SERIOUS bumps in those roads. this town was a lot different from the others, because about ten years ago it was completely wiped out by Hurricane Stan, and all the homes had been rebuilt by the government. It kind of reminded me of homes on a military base - they were all lined up in perfect rows and all of them were exactly the same. They also all had stoves, but they were tiny and it was difficult to cook for a family on them. there were tons of kids, and they were all adorable. 4 or 5 of the girls followed me around and took turns holding my hand, and when they weren't holding my hand they were taking turns poking me. it was very special. they spoke Kiche there, which Hilda also speaks, so no one spoke in spanish and I had no hope of following what was going on. After we were there for a while the clouds rolled in and it started pouring, which made for an even more exciting journey back down the mountain. These mountains are so high up that they are in the clouds, and when the storm clouds come in there is about a 6-foot visibility in every direction. Despite the communication barriers, I think I liked this town the best just because everyone was so friendly and nice. There is a team from Fredericksburg working there in a month or so and I may try to see if I can go back up and help out with the stoves. On Friday night, the people here threw a "welcoming party" for me and Jessie. This guy named Manuel who is a cook and friends with some of the people who work here came and cooked homemade pizza and chicken. It was a strange combination but soooo good. Then we built a bonfire in the courtyard and later some of the students from a spanish school here came and joined. There are a bunch of students from american universities, especially a lot from the university of dayton, who are staying here and attending a spanish school and living with host families, so it was fun to meet new people and speak english for once!
Sat: Jessie left at the crack of dawn for an excursion to this lake nearby - she's been taking classes at the spanish school this week and they were going for a weekend sightseeing trip. I was going to go along but then Hilda invited me to a lunch at her house on sunday to celebrate her mom's birthday, so I decided to stay home and go to that instead. So Saturday was very, very quite and uneventful. No one was here so I worked on uploading pictures for a while, took a brief walk around outside, cleaned my room, ate a lot of cheez-its...yup and that's basically it. It was a very exciting day.
Sun: at 7:30 am, Manuel, the guy who cooked dinner for us, and Juanita, one of the women who works here, came and picked Tony and me up for an adventure! They took us to this place, possibly called La Georgina, up in the mountains where there's this mini-resort type place. It was a bunch of little pools that are heated by the volcanic activity of the mountains...so it was basically like lots of giant hot tubs in the middle of the mountains. Soooo pretty. And so hot. It was fun for a while but then the water kind of started burning my skin so I had to get out. We got there really early and we were the only ones there for a while, then as it got later the place filled up with tourists and it was PACKED. by the time we left there were probably a hundred or so people in a very tiny area. SO then the four of us went to Hilda's house for her lunch. her house is really nice and she designed it herself, it's a lot more western than most of the homes i've seen, with the kitchen inside the house. her family made an awesome homecooked meal of chicken and rice and this corn dish, as well as soup and this cake/brownie thing. definitely the best meal i've had since i got here. we ate with her, her mom, her mom's mom (i think?), her three sons, and some other family members and neighbors. by the time we got home i was completely exhausted (the lunch lasted 3ish hours) and i spent the rest of the night doing nothing. it was great.
TODAY: Hilda and I went on this giant truck to the town that the mission team from colorado will be working in this week to deliver supplies! so. many. supplies. the team will be building 14 stoves, and for each stove you need 38 bricks, 30 giant cinderblocks, 2 bags of cement, and other things like metal stovetops and chimneys. hilda couldn't help cause she's 8ish months pregnant, so it was me and lots of mayan women unloading the stuff...and they are TOUGH. i thought i was really cool carrying 4 bricks at a time until 70-yr-old women galloped past me carrying 10+ bricks with babies on their backs. it was a great ego-killer. i am going to be helping the colorado mission team with the stoves, though i'm not sure yet when that is going to start. they were supposed to get here tomorrow and start stove building on wednesday, but apparently there was some sort of miscommunication and the team arrived TODAY, which was kind of bad when they showed up in guatemala city and no one was there to pick them up. i'm glad that didn't happen to me, i would have cried. so now i don't know whether they are going to start stove building tomorrow or wednesday, so i guess i will find out tomorrow when i get up! also just realized i have a nice farmer tan, aka sunburn, from working out in the sun today, hurrah! now i am off to watch 'he's just not that into you', a movie that took THREE DAYS to download on itunes because of the wonderfully slow guatemala internet connection. hopefully in the future i will write more consistently in this blog so i won't have to write novels every time i update. :)

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Part of trip: Highland Support Project Internship

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