xelahoo

The power is currently out here, so I am entertaining myself by writing a blog entry in a word document and then I will post it in the blog when (if?) the power comes back on. It goes out fairly often here, randomly and without warning, which makes life kind of inconvenient. But no biggie, there are plenty of fun things to do in the dark, like light candles and run into things, not necessarily in that order. So this past weekend Jessie, Tony and I took a trip to Panajachel/San Pedro, which are two towns on Lake Atitlan, an impossibly huge and ridiculously beautiful lake about 2 hours from Xela (will post pictures asap!). It was a fun trip despite the fact that the weather gods were 100% NOT working in our favor, and it rained the entire time. The ride there was very easy though because the AMA truck was making a trip to Pana on Saturday morning to do something relating to the mission group coming down this week. So we got a ride straight to Pana and walked around the markets for a while, which was fun EXCEPT the part where we got swarmed by thousands of people trying to sell us everything from linens to fedoras. If you stop for more than 30 seconds to look at something in the market, you are attacked by literally dozens of women and children saying ‘quieres comprar esto?’ if you say no they continue with ‘cuanto quieres pagar? Llama un precio!’. Now I completely understand people needing to make a living and we were all very patient to a point, but after a while we couldn’t take having our faces rubbed by various textile products anymore and escaped on a boat to San Pedro. The “ferry” ride was actually a little terrifying, as it was little more than a canoe with a roof and a motor with about 36 tourists packed in like sardines. It was a very scenic ride, though I probably would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t been mentally deciding which window I would escape through when we capsized. I realize it kind of sounds like I’m complaining about this, but I’m really not, it was overall a very fun trip, I am just relaying the facts. Plus sometimes when a lot of weird bad things happen all at once, it makes things that much more amusing. Anyways, we made it to San Pedro, which is a lot smaller, less touristy, and has way more hippies than Panajachel. As soon as we got off the boat we were met by a guy asking if we wanted a hotel, which we did, so he led us straight to this cute little hotel overlooking the lake that cost about $7/night for each of us. By that time it was raining so we took naps in the hammocks on the porch overlooking the lake, which was definitely a good way to spend the afternoon until the wind changed and we got soaked. That evening we walked around the town for a while and met a bunch of americans from texas living in a trailer on the side of the road...apparently they were traveling all the way down to chile and making a documentary. But actually just doing lots and lots of drugs. Then we got dinner and played darts, because we like to live on the edge. Oh yeah, and when the guys led us to the hotel, they offered a 3-hour horseback ride through the mountains that we could do the next morning for about $20, which sounded like the best thing ever so we gladly made reservations and paid ahead. Which was a great idea except that when we woke up the next morning it was pouring gatos y perros. The kind of dreary, cold rain that you know will never, ever let up. But we decided to go for it anyways and proceeded to take about a 4.5 hour horse trip through the mountains in the rain. It was kind of fun for the first few hours, except there were a few points I was convinced the horses were going to roll down the mountain. The views were very nice though, and our guide had all these strategic picturesque stopping points where he would position our horses in poses and take pictures that ended up looking like we were posing for a bad album cover. Some of them are pretty hilarious though, and I’m going to put them up as soon as I can. So after the super exciting horseback ride and trying to walk off the pain in our bodies for a while, we hopped on a minibus back to Xela where I took the longest shower of all time and curled up in my warm bed forever. All in all, definitely an eventful/fun weekend.

I don’t really remember what all happened between Monday and now, though on Tuesday I got to wake up at 5:30 am to go with Tony to help translate for an expedition to film the various stages of the wood carving process. The wood carving is kind of similar to the mayan weaving, where lots of different homes/shops are responsible for different parts of the process. First we went to a place where they do the carving by hand, then a place where they varnish/paint the wood, and later to a place where they do everything by machine. It was interesting, except for the waking up at the crack of dawn part. Yesterday I went with Tony, Lupe, Jessie, and a firefighter named Marvin to this small village where they are trying to build a team of firefighters, or bomberos. The village currently has no public safety group - no firefighters, police, doctors, or rescue squad. So Marvin volunteered to get a group of men from the village together and hold weekly meetings with them where he would teach them about basic safety, life-saving techniques, and health so that the men could bring the information back to their village and hopefully be able to help in emergencies. I went so that I could take notes about what kinds of things the men were learning and then speak with them about why they wanted to be bomberos and what they hoped to accomplish from the meetings so that I could write about the positive impact these volunteers are having on indigenous communities. There were 8 men there, and for a few hours Marvin went over the basic parts of the body, how to define trauma, what to do in different emergency situations like finding someone unconscious or with head injuries, and cpr/heimlich maneuver. At the end I got voice recordings of some of them talking, but I’m currently stuck because they spoke in K’iche and the only person that knows K’iche is Hilda, and she is currently off having a baby. So I can’t write up the story until I get the recordings translating, which is kind of sad because I was really looking forward to it. In the meantime, I think I’m just going to tag along with the mission teams when they go on their stove building projects and speak with the women in the communities about how the stoves will change their lives and anything else about their lives that they will share with me, and then write about it. I originally planned on going to the community today, but when I woke up the weather was so hideous I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I think this weekend Jessie and I are going to try to escape to the beach, which is only a little over an hour away but since the elevation is so much lower it’s 90 degrees there, where as here it’s about 60. And raining. And according to weather.com, it will be thunderstorming for the next 10 days. So it’s definitely time to escape so we don’t go crazy from the weather. I miss summer!

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Part of trip: Highland Support Project Internship

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