La Escuela de la Montana part II

Other highlights from my week in the mountains.

I finally got pictures of the giant leaves I first talked about in my Fuentes Gorginas post. I think it's called the Elephant Ear Plant - quite appropriate. We went for a walk on one of the nearby coffee fincas (plantations) one morning and I got some shots of the various plants and run-down buildings. We learned all about the process of cultivating and harvesting coffee - it is time and labor intensive! My favorite part of the outing was that I was the translator (with the help of Troy who's Spanish is more advanced than mine, but who's attention span is a bit more mercurial). I felt pretty darn competent with my Spanish, recounting the story of the plantation for the group. This was the week when things started to click for me, I can now understand the vast majority of what folks say, and little by little my verbal expression is catching up.

View of the back section of the finca, which looks out over a ravine to another finca. Since the coffee crisis this finca has fallen into disrepair. They tried diversifying their crops with avocados and flowers, but neither has done very well.

This is a neat little plant that I totally forget the name of. If you stroke it's leaves, they gently close up, sort of like a butterfly closing it's wings. It's not carnivorous, but the action provides some sort of protection against predators (I think). The little white flecks are flecks of ash that were falling like snow from the nearby volcano that erupts every 40 min. or so

This is what coffee looks like fresh off the plant. The seed pods are bright red when ripe, and the seed inside is covered in a sticky sweet "miel" (honey). It's really tasty! The beans go through a series of steps to separate out the higher quality from the lower quality, de-casque the seed, and dry it in preparation for export.

This is the drying patio. It's a large area - think football field. Coffee beans take 2-3 days to dry in the sun. The harvest matches up with the dry season, so there's rarely rain to spoil the process

The other half of the drying patio where you can see the secador de cafe - or coffee dryer. It's the building with the rusting tower-like thing. That's what they use for higher volumes of beans and faster production times. Beans can dry in about 24 hours in the coffee dryer.

This was me trying to get a Dylan-worthy picture of old industrial structures.

This is part of the "big house" or the plantation owner's house. It's rather palatial and sits just above the coffee drying patio. No one lives here at the moment, the family visits about once a month to check on stuff, but spend most of their time at their other plantation close to Antigua where they run an ecotourism finca/hotel/business thing.

Depending on the type of coffee planted, coffee trees can have a production span of as little as 10 years (or as many as 40). The wood makes for a good building material and that's what this decorative patio enclosure is made out of.

I actually felt like I was in the tropics the week I was at the mountain school, mostly because of all the flowers and the green plants. This was on the front entryway of the big house on the plantation

In what I guess constitutes the front side-yard of the big house.

More decorative details in coffee wood. Looking at the gardening shed from the front entryway

I took this shot through the cracks in the window below. this is the front patio/front entryway through the main door of the big house.

Coffee wood decoration/window framing the main door of the house

Giant leaves!!!

Jorge, our guide, insisted on me taking a picture with him for scale. Seriously, giant leaves!

There are a bunch of insects at the mountain school - it's actually at a lower elevation than Xela and a bit closer to the coast so the climate is warmer, more humid, and rainy-er. Hence, more insects. We also had the fun of experiencing the results of a Pacific tropical storm - it just meant more rain, stronger rain, for longer periods of time during the day. After a few storms roll through during the season, though, the risk of landslides increases and there is a distinct possibility of the road through the mountains connecting Xela and Colomba getting washed out.

But I digress - insects! There were lots of them! I got some great photos of a monarch that fed on some of the flowers next to the front patio of school. There was one night when James, another student, came and found me to show me a giant moth that had landed on one of the bookcases in the library - it was pretty darn cool - and another day he had a giant grasshopper on the wall next to his bunk. It was so big that its mandibles actually posed a bite risk, which is nearly impossible with grasshoppers. I was in entomology heaven, although the downside was that there were also mosquitoes and no-see-ums, so I ended up with a handful of bites - nothing like James though, that kid's legs looked like the definition of smallpox. Those bites itched worse than anything, and the worst part was they were on a 12 hour delay. You'd see the bite during the day and it wouldn't start itching until the next morning - so you had all night to anticipate the ensuing misery. My favorite morning, though, was when I was surprised by a little colony of ants ... who took up residence in the zipper of my backpack. They were just chilling - larvae and all - in the crease under the flap that covers the zipper. It was zipped up, they didn't get into my clothes or anything, and it was straightforward enough to brush them off outside. I was just so surprised because they moved in literally within 18 hours. It was really rather impressive.

This was the view from the window of my room. Our classes took place in those hut-looking things. They have banana leaves for the roofs which have to be replaced every two years or so. It's hard to see from this picture, but there are these intensely purple flowers dotting the trees.

Monarch butterfly grabbing some nectar. There were lots of other butterflies too of all different shapes and colors, but none of them stood still long enough for a picture

Rather pleased with this shot, it was a good pose

I fell in love with these flowers. They were electric purple. Incredible.

These flowers poked up on sturdy green stalks coming out of the ground. The bloom is about the size of a grapefruit.

More of my favorite purple ones

These were little low-to-the-ground cover that bordered the front patio of school. I like the variegated leaves

I didn't stage this. There was one of the purple flower petals stuck to the trunk of the tree they grow on right at eye-level, and it just happens to resemble a heart.

In addition to the coffee finca hike, we also went to visit a nearby collective of ex-guerrilas for our longer Saturday outing. The community is called Santa Anita and is about 45 minutes from the school on the other side of Colomba - we did the trip in true local style: standing up in the back of a pick-up truck. It's an extremely common mode of transportation here and they modify the beds of the pickups with a psuedo-cage of support bars for folks to hold on to. If it rains, they throw a tarp over you. It's a ton of fun and, despite being the most dangerous mode of transportation I've taken, is by far my favorite way to see the countryside. I snapped some awesome pictures of the Santa Maria volcano while in motion.

The view from the back of the pick-up truck. It's a rather nice stretch of road between school and Colomba

Yes, I really snapped this from the back of a pick-up truck doing 50mph. Santa Maria almost always has that wisp of cloud as her crown. The little tiny mountain you see on her right slope is the one that erupts constantly and showered our first finca hike with ash.

Santa Maria volcano

The community of Santa Anita is made up of ex-guerrilas who fought against the dictator regimes during the armed-conflict. After the peace accords were signed in 1996, this group of ex-guerrilas found an abandoned coffee finca and worked for several years to earn the rights and the loan to buy it from the government. The documentary Voice of a Mountain tells the story of this community, which is really very impressive. They joined the armed conflict in part to fight for the rights of campaneros (countryside folk/farmers) and indigenous persons to own their own land to make a living off of. After the war they had a dream of a self-sustaining coffee collective that would allow the families of their community to make a living and provide an education for their children. It has been an uphill battle. From winning the rights and the loan for the land to cultivating a brand new coffee crop (it takes about 5 years minimum for coffee plants to mature enough to produce a sell-able harvest) to facing an economic crisis when the world coffee market crashed to providing potable water and education for their children. They have fought every step of the way for everything they have. Currently, they produce organic, free trade coffee and bananas (although a banana blight a few years ago has hampered that part of their operation). They also rent out their equipment and labor for processing coffee to smaller operations nearby, like the school. They're chipping away at the incredible amount of debt that they're in, but it's slow going.
We got an awesome tour of the community, the finca, and hiked down to the bottom of a ravine to see some really awesome waterfalls. In the early days of the community they used to have to manually haul their water up from the ravine because they had no plumbing and no other water source. It was enough for me to hike myself out, I couldn't imagine doing it with 5 gallons of water on my back. One of their first top priority projects was to build a rain-collecting water tower and a plumbing system to every house. It took them several years, but now every house has running water, 24/7 - a feat the community is very proud of.

Bananas!

This is from a look-out point built on the back side of the finca at Santa Anita. I'm not sure what mountain that is. The vista overlooked a ravine (we later walked down it in one corner) with a waterfall on the far side. We didn't hike to that waterfall, but we did get some pretty cool ones on our side. The far side was another finca.

This was the first waterfall we came to - I thought it was the only one we were going to see so I have a good half dozen shots of it. We could walk up and stand under it and after walking down a steep 1,000 foot drop or so with a fair amount of humidity, it felt awesome!

Looking down the ravine, you can sort of see how the walls of the canyon rise up around us. This is probably the rain-forest-y picture everyone thought of when I said I was going to Guatemala.

So I got a little picture happy with the waterfalls (I like waterfalls, and we passed 4ish), but this is by far my favorite.

Another shot of the same waterfall as above, but zoomed in on the top. It just looked really cool the way the water cascaded down this rock face.

Another gorgeous tropical flower. This one looks like a trumpet and hangs down, I crouched underneath to take this shot looking up into the bell. Right after this we came across a tree with a couple pairs of parrots, but they were so high up and so well camouflaged I didn't even bother taking a photo.

Another highlight from my week at the mountain school was the little puppy who showed up one day mid-week, and decided to adopt the school as her new home. This black and brown pup wandered into the kitchen one afternoon, sniffed around, and decided she liked the place. We all kept asking "who's dog is that?" but no one seemed to know. She curled up in a corner and took a nap - looking pretty ridiculously adorable. A while later the real school dogs returned - they usually spend their day wandering around the grounds, following people to meals, and napping. As they wandered into the kitchen the little pup woke up and immediately started making a riot to defend "her" territory. The (much older) school dogs gave her a look as though they couldn't even be bothered to teach her who the real boss was. She ended up hanging out for a few days until we found out which local family she belonged to. The Colorado high school group sort of adopted her...or maybe she adopted them, it wasn't really too clear. It just amused me to no end that she literally wandered in one day and decided to stay.

La Escuela de la Montana (The Mountain School) part I

Lo siento (I'm sorry), I've fallen behind drastically on my blog duties. I'm going to try to get everything updated - there's a lot to cover so here we go...
We'll start with Mountain School adventures. I only got to spend one week up there and, honestly, that was probably enough time for me. Things run at a much slower pace up at the mountain school...

Yay naptime in the hammocks :)

I was quite proud of myself for getting up there all on my own. I told the bus driver in Xela that I was headed to the Mountain School and the Ayudante (the helper guy on the bus) let me know when we were there. It really felt like it was in the middle of nowhere - they actually missed the stop proper so I was dropped on the side of the road 50meters past or so, around the corner. Short hike up the road and I found the turn off for the town of Santo Domingo. The school is just up that road a ways, well before you actually reach the town.

The school itself is mostly made up of dorm rooms. They weren't quite full up the week I was there so I had my own room, which was rather nice. They only have space for 14 students, and everyone stays in the school, so you get to know everyone quite well. The week I was there there was a group from Colorado studying - it was a school-organized trip for 3 high school students. They had 3 chaperones as well, and a younger sibling tagging along.

Life at the mountain school runs on its own time schedule. There is Guatemalan Time, which is a slower, more laid-back pace - and then there is mountain school time, which is a half hour to an hour behind schedule. Sometimes more. The classes run on time, and generally the meals, but not a whole lot else.

Meals are eaten in the home of a local family. There are two tiny towns between the school and the small town of Santo Domingo. First is Fatima - there are literally two dirt "roads" (read: footpaths) off the main cobblestone street. After Fatima is Nuevo San Jose, which I think is another two dirt roads, but might just be one (my family lived down at the end of the first road of this village, so I never had to remember if there was a second one or not). The villages of Fatima and Nuevo San Jose are communities of ex-coffee plantation workers.

History: In the mid to late 90's and early 2000's, the world coffee market crashed thanks to 1) the arrival of a Vietnamese coffee crop flooding the market - the World Bank and IMF funded coffee projects to help revitalize the economy in Vietnam, but it ended up bottoming out the price of coffee and severely affecting the economies of a lot of central and south american countries who depended on their coffee crop exports - including Guatemala. 2) In part thanks to the increased supply, the US and some European companies started deviating from a previous agreement of paying fair-er trade prices for coffee imports and going for rock-bottom prices that helped increase their profit margins. Technically they played by free-market economy rules - but that didn't help the plantation workers in Guatemala or elsewhere. A lot of plantations went broke - including the plantations where the people of Fatima and Nueva San Jose lived and worked.

In the past, large coffee plantations often supported 100 or so people year round to tend the coffee crop. When the harvest came migrant workers would come in and increase the ranks to 200-300, sometimes more at the really large plantations. Coffee plantation living was a hard life, plantation owners usually tried to increase their profit margins by skimping on the amenities for workers. Think one-room huts for a family of 6-8, running water and drainage if they were lucky (but most weren't, and even if they had running water, it's not potable down here). Wages were right at poverty levels or below. Laws exist(ed) that require plantation owners to provide a livable wage, humane living conditions, and education for the children of employees. But quite often the laws weren't followed, and the infractions were overlooked by officials.

In the case of Fatima, the plantation owner stopped paying wages for 7 months (I think) when the operation went bankrupt. The workers ended up striking and I think taking the plantation owner through the courts. They had a pretty good outcome and recouped all of their back wages plus damages. It was with this money that the community bought the land that is now the village of Fatima. The case of Nueva San Jose is a bit more dramatic. They weren't paid for their work for over a year - similar situations had happened before for months at a stretch, and the owner always eventually paid them their back wages, which is possibly why they waited so long. With no money for food, and no land to grow their own crops, most families lost children to starvation. They tried to organize and take the plantation owner to court, but he bribed the judge (a pretty common occurrence) and it quickly became obvious that they weren't going to be able to use the judicial system for justice. So, desperate and starving, they took the plantation owner hostage to use as leverage for ransom negotiations. They did manage to bargain for some of their back wages - but I don't think they got all of them - and they didn't get any damages. The community still managed to buy some land next to the village of Fatima.

Life now isn't that much easier than it was when families lived and worked on the plantations. They don't generally have regular work or sources of income. The men usually ride into one of the nearby towns for day labor. Minimum wage in Guatemala is around Q86/day ($11-12/day) but often day laborers receive less than that as they're not regulated. The bus into town and back is around Q5 or Q10 so if they don't get work for a few days that expense will quickly eat up a previous day's earnings. This is one of the reasons the school has become such a vital part of these two communities. Families are paid a living wage for the week for hosting a student. As there are more families than students, you get a new family every week so the work is rotated throughout the communities. There is also a rotation of women in the communities who are hired to come work cleaning the school each week, and a couple of men who work as night-guards.

When I say that these families live in destitute poverty, that is not an exaggeration. One of the main reasons students sleep in the school is that the living conditions in the homes of the host families just can't accommodate students. My family's house was approximately 15x20ft made out of corrugated tin (and plastic tarps to cover the holes) and consisted of two "rooms" (there wasn't really much of a divider between them though). The kitchen and the bedroom with 3 beds for the 6 members of the family (2 parents and 4 kids). I fell in love with their stove, which I think was built as part of a development project the school helped secure grant funds for.

Overhead shot of fresh tortillas cooking on the stove. Francisca, my host mom, Gladys, her oldest daughter (13) and Lily (11) would make these fresh at every meal. No other tortillas compare. In the mornings Lily would often come in part way through breakfast balancing a bowl of ground maize on her head for the day's supply of tortillas.

Side view (and too dark - sorry) with Francisca's hand dipping in for a bite of breakfast. You can see the sheet that serves to separate the eating space from the sleeping space. This looks at what is technically the back door. You can also see the large tea kettle used for boiling water to ensure it is drinkable. I had hot/warm water with all my meals. It was interesting and actually pretty good!

The kids in my family - Gladys (13), Lily (11), Eduardo (9), y Selvin (6) - were full of energy and pep. They are used to extranjeros (foreigners) and talk slow - usually - and ask a lot of questions. Lily ought to be a Spanish teacher when she grows up, she is a stickler for pronunciation. Books are quite expensive so many students often raid the school library and bring children's books to read at meal times. It's great practice for our Spanish and great practice for the kid's reading skills. My family was obsessed with Clifford books. I also taught the girls how to play Cat's Cradle - the last day Gladys surprised me with a bunch of other string games and designs - she hadn't let on that she knew any of them. And I sang camp songs in English for them. The kids loved Alligator (they always do) and the Irish Blessing Song. Despite being poorer than poor, every family has at least one cell phone and Lily recorded me singing the Irish Blessing Song no less than 3 times. One day I sang it for 3 different cell phones - each of her parents' and a neighbor's. For my graduation speech at the end of the week I translated the lyrics into Spanish. I also made a little song book for my family. I wrote each of the songs we'd sung during the week in English, then the transliteration (because pronunciation is one of the hardest things for Guatemalans when they learn English), and then the translation so they could understand the song.

Here's the version of the Irish Blessing Song I sing:
Puede el camino subir con tigo
Puede el viento siempre estar detras ti
Puede el sol brillar sobre ti
Puede la lluvia caer suave en tus campo
Y hasta nos encontramos con nosotros otra vez
Puede la tierra sostenerte
En sus hondonadas y sus terrenos

May the road rise with you
May the wind be always at your back
May the sun shine upon you
May the rain fall softly on your fields
And until we meet again
May the Earth hold you
In her hollows and her lands

Oh what a long strange week it's been!

Get ready for a long strange post!

Monday I met with the volunteer coordinator from Primeros Pasos, the clinic I'm hoping to volunteer at. Although my Spanish level is currently lower than what they normally take, she seemed optimistic that we could work something out. I am tentatively going to be working with their nutrition program that helps support nutrition education and supplementation for malnourished children in local rural highland communities. If I can start the first week of July I can get a full 6 weeks of volunteering in, so I immediately set about to work on rearranging my schedule. I was scheduled to study at La Escuela de la Montana the first 2 weeks of July, but now I'm headed there for next week leaving tomorrow. There isn't internet at the Mountain School so I'm planning on being non-communicative for the next week which necessitates trying to get a bit ahead in my MGH classes, so that's made it a rather stressful week.

In addition, Monday night I found out I had to change host families on short notice this week. The youngest daughter of my family was 8.5 months pregnant and Monday afternoon found out she was going to need an urgent c-section Tuesday morning (They'd been monitoring her for signs of pre-eclampsia, although her blood pressure was fine, but apparently the baby was breech and there was a concern about the cord being around it's neck). Clearly the family was quite worried and preoccupied and weren't going to be able to continue hosting a student, so I packed up my things Monday night and met my new family Tuesday for lunch. I have since heard that both mom and baby are doing just fine and are home recuperating. I'll put the details about my new family in a separate post because it turned out to be quite long.

Tuesday night I met up with Dani, Erik, and their set of friends for Viktor and Maria's going away party...Just realized I never posted about Dani and Erik and their set of friends. Back story: one of my friends from the MoS, Diana, has a sister, Danielle (Dani) who has been living in Guatemala for a couple of years. Dani and her boyfriend Erik (who is Guatemalan) moved to Xela about 6 months ago. Diana linked me and Dani up via facebook before my trip and I ended up bringing down some things for her and Erik from the states (specifically Lactaid, which you can't get here, and is Erik's lifeline as he's lactose intolerant). My first Tuesday in town they were having a dinner get together at their house with a group of friends and invited me to join them. It's a group that gets together regularly, mostly made up of Erik's friends from University and Dani's friends through various NGOs that operate in Xela. This was before I had a phone, of course, and Dani and I planned that I would meet her friend Ana in Parque Central by the McDonald's and we would travel to Dani and Erik's apartment together. Imagine my surprise when instead of an Ana at McDonalds, there was a young Guatemalan gentleman with an umbrella who introduced himself as Viktor and in thickly accented English told me he was one of Dani's friends, she had asked him to meet me there, and if I wanted to go with him to his apartment there was a whole group of folks heading over for dinner. So that's how I met Viktor, and after we got to his apartment I met his girlfriend Maria, who is Danish, along with 5 or 6 other folks headed to Dani and Erik's for dinner as well.

Fast-forward to this past Tuesday, Viktor and Maria are getting ready to travel to Denmark, and hosted a going away party at a local restaurant. It was a blast, the food was great, and it was really awesome to see how far my Spanish had come along. Erik was impressed, and I got to show off a bit to Viktor which was nice considering our first conversation four weeks ago was so halting. After dinner we all migrated to a local bar, Social - which has darts! and is right next to El Cuartito. I called and negotiated my first taxi all by myself - in Spanish, por supesto (of course) and played a quick round of darts while I was waiting for him to come round. It's the same taxi driver Sarah, another friend in this group, used the night of dinner at Dani and Erik's. She helped me and a handful of others get home that first night and introduced me to Humberto, a very amiable and reputable cabbie, who's number I've had stored in my phone ever since if I need a cab.

Of course, there were other shenanigans to fill up my Tuesday afternoon. Maggie and I popped into Cafe Red to try their hot chocolate con leche and for me to vent and process about having to change families (post with those details is here). Then Maggie, who's here on a trip with 15-20 other students from her university and is acting coordinator, got a call that one of the girls had potentially broken her ankle...and then climbed a volcano over the weekend. We both trekked across town to pay the girl a visit and figure out a planned course of action. Turned out her ankle wasn't broken, just very badly sprained. She'd had a heck of a time with the doctors at the public hospital. I took a look at the xrays and could see that she didn't have any obvious tib/fib or hind-foot fracture, but there were no clear shots of her mid-foot and, in reality, she needed an MRI to be sure of anything. Luckily, her host mom's daughter was an xray tech and was planning on accompanying her to a specialist the following day. It looked like a really bad sprain and I haven't heard that she had to fly back to the states or anything (which she would have had she needed surgery) so I think that turned out OK.

Thursday was quite rough. A family who had been hosting students for the school for a very, very long time - 20 years or so - had a tragic car crash that killed both the mom, Violeta, her mom (the grandmother), and left Violeta's father (the grandfather) in hospital with serious injuries. I have heard that he is ok. Kira, one of the students in my little circle of friends, had been living with this family, although the details are a little complex. For her first three weeks, Kira lived with Violeta (Violeta's children are grown, and her husband passed away many years ago, although my teacher this week tells me that students say she had a boyfriend). Kira's third week, Violeta moved into a new house just on the other side of Parque Central and Violeta's sister moved into her previous house with her husband and two boys. They continued to host Kira, and that's who Kira was living with this week when the tragic car crash occurred. The entire school community has been shaken by the loss. There was a vigil at the funeral home Thursday night and the funeral and burial was on Friday morning. Kira, Jake, and Bryan, who have all spent time with the family (Jake and Bryan are travel buddies, and Jake and Kira have been an item while at PLQ). They all helped Violeta move into her new house just a few weeks ago. Very, very sad series of events.

On top of that, Bryan graduated this week, he and Jake are taking off for Columbia to continue their CA/SA travels, Kira is flying back to the states for her sister's high school graduation - although she's coming back in 2 weeks, and this was Maggie's last official week as well (although she's graduating next week and hanging around for another month volunteering at a local women's weaving cooperative). But in general, my original group of friends is cycling through and I had to say a lot of temporary goodbyes yesterday - Niki, another of our crowd, is also wrapping up her studies this week, although she too is hanging around for another month or two.

We celebrated with a group excursion to Bake Shop during Friday morning classes with our teachers. Bake Shop is a tienda (shop) run by local Mennonites that is open on Tuesdays and Fridays over in Zone 3 - it's about a 20 minute walk from school. They have the best baked goods in Xela, according to Bryan and Maggie - who were both incredulous that it was possible for me to be in Xela for a whole month and not once have visited Bake Shop. Maggie points out the way every time we're in Zone 3 and actually got me a blackberry filled doughnut to cheer me up on Tuesday when I had to switch families. They do have really, really good doughnuts. So Friday morning we all made the excursion to get there for 9am when they open - you really do have to get there early cuz stuff sells out quickly. I got a small pumpkin bread loaf, cupcakes, strawberry doughnut, and peanut butter doughnut (they're filled with a peanut butter filling and glazed in chocolate. strange sounding, but very good) for Q52 (about $8). I shared the cupcakes at the bar last night, and about half of the pumpkin loaf at lunch with my family yesterday, but the remainder will last me until Monday or Tuesday. I'm officially a Bake Shop convert.

My first taste of Bake Shop - the blackberry doughnut Maggie got me on Tuesday.

For those of you keeping track - Tuesday night was Viktor & Maria's going away party, Thursday, aside from the funeral vigil, was soccer and pizza, and Friday is graduation dinner at school (Wednesday was movie night and I ate dinner early with the intention of going, and then promptly fell asleep to the sound of the rain on the roof). Tonight will be my first dinner with my new family...and probably my last as I leave for the Mountain School tomorrow and expect to have a different family when I return.

I realized I had some pictures from my first week of Friday night festivities, and the general outline is the same each week, so here's a few shots of the "band" and the Foosball table (mesa de futillo)

We'll move from right to left. This was a cena tipica, which means staff cooked and students were responsible for drinks. There is always more alcohol available on cena tipica nights. We push all the little study tables together to create one long table for everyone. You also get a lovely shot of the back of Fergle's head (yes, that's his real, given name). This is also the least fuzzy picture of Carlos, our water-jug percussionist and school director, and Saul, guitarist extraordinaire and mi maestro from last week (my week 3).

Didn't realize how fuzzy this photo was but it's the best one I have of the band. Carlos, Saul, and Eduardo, I think, is on rain stick. Dimitri is in the blue and Switkrit (sp?) is in the black sweatshirt. Switkrit is from Nepal, lives in Vegas with his Guatemalan girlfriend, and wanted to improve his Spanish so he could speak to her grandparents. How adorably romantic is that? He graduated last week and taught a bunch of us how to whistle with our fingers. Aside from the Guatemalan Snap and Preterito (past tense) it's the third coolest thing I've learned thus far (although, at the time, it was the most awesome thing I had learned).

The other end of the table looking towards the bathrooms. The gentleman is Errol, my San Franciscian adventure buddy for our epic chicken bus introduction to Guatemala. What I missed in these photos are the lyrics posted on the wall to a couple of the songs we sing just about every week. We always end with Bella Ciao which is catchy and of course embellished with clapping, stomping, and whistling (the link is to the Spanish Wikipedia page. Should be a translate button. Our version of the song is a little different as it's been translated with very basic Spanish)

La Mesa de Futillo! A perennial favorite. The lovely gringa in this photo is KC, another Oregon native who has been living here for several months. She fills in sometimes as student coordinator both at PLQ and the Mountain School when folks are out on vacation. She also bakes fabulous cookies, brownies, and makes a killer Quetzeltecca w/ ginger ale.

This week was an international dinner, it alternates each week. Cena internacional is when the students cook and cena tipica (traditional dinner) is when the staff cooks. As the first week of June heralds the beginning of summer vacation in the states, we've had a massive influx of students. from 15 or so we've grown to 25-30ish. This makes it rather tricky to coordinate the use of the single stove and sink in the school kitchen. I had been absent for my first international dinner two weeks ago with my GI grumblings, and had missed out on Maggie's apparently amazing mac & cheese. Since Maggie had a weekend trip planned with her school group and wasn't around for a repeat performance, Niki and I combined efforts to replicate her recipe (it's actually the same recipe I use when I'm doing a proper baked mac & cheese - it's a cheese sauce with a rue base with the final dish finished off in the oven). I also did an ad-hoc version of one of my family's favorite deserts - affectionately termed "dump cake" after the "dumping" motion made with the 3 main ingredients. It is literally the easiest desert recipe ever. Here, I will reproduce it for you :)

Dump-Cake (or Cherry Pineapple Cobbler if you want to be fancy)
1 large can of crushed pineapple (I think it's the 14oz can)
1 can of cherry pie filling
1 box of yellow cake mix. Vanilla will probably work too. Pick your favorite brand. Or whatever's on sale.
1 stick of butter (1/4lb)
chopped nuts (optional - I don't use them but my mom always did half of her cobbler with walnuts or pecans)

Dump can of crushed pineapple into 9x11 baking dish/pan (or whatever pan you have handy that approximates the volume of a 9x11). Dump in the can of pie filling. Mix so you'll get some pineapple and cherry in each bite. Cover with dry cake mix - literally just open the box and dump it straight on - do not follow the box directions, do not mix anything in the cake mix, just cover the fruit in the pan. Make sure the cake mix is evenly spread out on top. Dot with dabs of butter every 1/2 inch or so - the idea is that the butter will melt and cover the top of the cake mix and help it brown up, there's no exact science, just add butter dots till it looks like the top is sufficiently covered. If you're adding chopped nuts, sprinkle 'em on now. Put in oven that is somewhere around 400. Our oven last night had the numbers 1-5 on the dial - no way to tell the temp. I told Aliza anything between 350-450 was good and we made a blind stab at it - it turned out fine (it's a very forgiving recipe). Bake until top is brown, fruit is bubbly, and you smell the smell that makes you go "oh! right! I have something in the oven! Smells pretty good, I should probably check on it...." Usually 45min-1hr.

So, for my ad-hoc recipe I had to substitute canned peaches and a jar of strawberry jam for the filling since pineapple and cherry pie filling was not available. Also, here we're cooking at high altitude so water takes forever to boil - this probably affected the cooking time but I wouldn't know for sure since I never time it. You don't have to worry about anything rising since it's a dry crumble top. Still turned out delicious - especially when combined with another student's fresh fruit salad. Seriously, you should make it tonight. Pick up some vanilla ice cream if you're feeling decadent. It's great for breakfast too, although I can't say how well it holds up beyond a desert and a breakfast, we always finish it by then.

With the raging success of Niki's and my culinary feats, it was time for the graduation presentations. Bryan had been telling us for the past week and a half that he was planning a game for his graduation. No amount of pleading or cajoling would get him to reveal any more details. As an added mystique, he showed up to dinner having shaved the totality of his 6 weeks worth of facial hair growth - except for his moustache. Everything finally made sense when he came to the front of the room and ceremoniously hung up his hand-made jeopardy board. He split us into three teams - to buzz in to answer we needed to do the Guatemalan Finger Snap which is a bit tricky to pick up (You put your middle finger and thumb together, relax your pointer finger, and then flick your wrist. Your pointer finger slaps against your middle and thumb to make the snap. It's all in the wrist, and I find it helps to tuck my ring and pinky away, just like I was going to snap American style). The questions (answers?) were all movie quotes translated into Spanish. We had to answer with the Spanish translation of the title of the movie the quote came from. Example: "Yo se Kung Fu!" = "I know Kung Fu" from the Matrix (which is the same name in Espanol). "Tu vas a necesitar un bote mas grande." = "You're going to need a bigger boat." From Jaws, which is Mandibula (or Garras to be more precise). It was a blast! The staff really got into it too. Our team was number 2 and we had one of my teacher's grand kids on our team, a girl of 11 or so, who totally got the final Jeopardy question for us (we had to translate the movie "Up" which literally translated is Arriba, but in actuality got changed to Una Adventura de Altura for Spanish markets, which is the title she put down. We won on this technicality). By far the best graduation activity I have seen yet, it's gonna be a hard one to top.

So the week has ended on an up note. Tomorrow I'll catch the Xela-ju chicken bus (all on my own!) and make the hour trek out just past the town of Colomba to the three acres that constitutes La Escuela de la Montana, nestled into the mountain among coffee plants. This time I'll be one of those folks being let off on the side of the road, apparently in the middle of nowhere, to make the short walk up the drive to school. I'm excited. I hear there are all sorts of farm animals that are kept on the property including cats and a new litter of kittens. Although, Bryan recommended washing your hands thoroughly after playing with them, or otherwise be prepared to spend a day puking.

In any event, I'll leave you with some choice photos I managed to get this week. While walking to La Dispensa (one of the local grocery stores) to get ingredients for dinner, we had a somewhat unusual rain for late afternoon Xela; nice and light with the sun shining in full. I was walking with two other students, an Aussie and Tennessean, who were bemoaning rain in general and rain in cities in particular. I responded with my two cents, "I grew up in a place with lots of rain, so I've always liked it, and the smell. Rain makes everything smell clean and this, for me, is perfect rain. Light, gentle, and with the sun shining low like that you might be just lucky enough..." at this point we had crossed into Parque Central where everyone was bustling about enjoying a Friday late afternoon in the park. The trees and flowers looked positively golden in the wet and the sun. I turned around so the sun was behind us and looked up to the spot in the sky where I'd expect to see what I was looking for, and physics and nature did not disappoint. "...To get a rainbow. Or, apparently, a double rainbow."

Enjoy the Genesis reference here. I have a better close-up of the rainbow, but this gives you a view of the entire front of the cathedral. I personally think it's even more impressive from the roof of school; you can see all five? I think? of the domes in the back.

The other pic I got only happened because of my new family and my new walk to school. There are some pictures of my new street in the other post because it's quiet and empty in the mornings. This one is from the top of the street my school is on. The slight curve in the street lines the houses up just so to best show off their colors, which all happen to complement one another beautifully. This is probably the prettiest stretch of street to be found in Xela, and I wouldn't have realized that if I hadn't been walking from this new direction.

If you look close you can read the "Alto" on the stop sign. School is the bright yellow building on the right.

Mi Familia Nueva

For the explanation of why I had to change families, check out this post.
 
My new family is quite different from my first. The housekeeper/cook, Margarita, picked me up at school to bring me home for lunch. She is a tiny woman barely coming up to my armpit and reminds me of my grandmother on my Dad's side. Hardy, kind, smiles easily, and bustles around the kitchen producing delicious meals as if by magic. She wears the more traditional dress of a colorful skirt, huipil, and apron. Once we got to the house, which is several blocks further away from the school than my first home and on a quiet street that has a bakery (Peter Pan - pan is Spanish for bread), I met Margarita's assistant, a young girl of 15 named Cesia who has been working for this family for 3 or 4 years. She started out working in elementary school after classes and during school breaks, and now that she's in secondary school she works full time and attends classes on Sundays. She comes from a family of 13 siblings and lives here in the house along with Margarita. From what I understand Margarita has no children of her own and has been working and living with this family for some time. There's also Jullian, a young man who looks about the same age as Cesia. He is also an employee of the family but I'm not sure what he does.

My new street, Diagonal 1, looking in the direction of 6ta calle (6th street - my old street although several blocks down) on the walk to school. Building facades are very colorful pretty much all over the city, although some areas are less so. I never cease to be amazed at the spaces that are contained behind the doors. Cafe Red is a great example. It's a cafe with a drab, industrial looking facade on the street - indeed, it's easy to miss if you don't know what you're looking for - but step inside and you find yourself in a beautiful courtyard ringed with a covered patio for tables and an asian architecture-inspired tea-house looking building in the middle that houses a dining room, the kitchen, and a funky bathroom with a claw-foot tub

Looking back up my street in the opposite direction, towards my new house - the front door is right where those cars are, on the right-hand side of the street. If you look closely at the blue building on the left you can see the Peter Pan bakery - it's open in the afternoons. I wish I could give you an idea of how narrow the sidewalks are - maybe 2.5 feet across? It's not enough for two people to walk next to each other, and someone has to turn flat to let another person pass.

Sitting down to lunch I first met Ana-Lucia, Margoli (I think), and Jeni (pronounced hen-y). I hadn't been told anything about the family, really, so I assumed that they were sisters all close in age (18-20ish) especially because Ana-Lucia and Jeni were going back and forth like siblings. When I asked, however, Ana-Lucia and Jeni laughed and said no, Jeni was just good friends with Ana-Lucia. I puzzled over this for a bit because Jeni seemed to have her own room in the house. I decided that maybe there was some reason she had moved in with Ana-Lucia's family, like for school. Shortly after we were joined by yet another young woman, Mady (short for Madelina) who finally explained to me that, no, none of the girls in the house were related, they were all students renting rooms or apartments. Soon after Mady arrived she was followed by Tanya, Mali, and Milton, yet more university students who are staying here. Apparently the house (which is huge and includes three apartments outside the main house but within the same roofed compound) is more like a boarding house. The couple that owns it have three sons, all grown and either living or studying in Guatemala City.

While there are several advantages to such a living arrangement - ample hot water, internet, and very flexible meal times - I miss the more cohesive feel of a single family unit. I definitely had a couple days of culture shock after being uprooted and, while everyone here is very nice, the students are young and talk very fast and tend to ignore me during conversations unless they want to try out some English. I don't mind so much as I like teaching and it's kind of fun to hear them stumble over English pronunciation the way I do with Spanish, however technically they're not supposed to speak any English with me. I learned from my first family that they have to sign a contract with the school about that, although it's likely the students aren't aware of this. They're just all so young. Secondary school ends at 16 here and then folks start on what's termed their Bachelor's, which takes 2-3 years depending on the degree (generally technical degrees or trade professions - like a secretary, legal assistant, nurse, mechanic). Professions requiring more technical instruction or academic instruction, like medicine, engineering, psychology, lawyer, go on after their Bachelor's to University. Mady and I had an entire conversation about the differences between the US degree system and the Guatemalan system, and she had a hard time understanding that for us, University and a Bachelor's degree are practically synonymous terms - they're not separate entities.

So, all of the students attend University. Jeni is the youngest at 19, she just started her first year of med school, and Mady and Milton are the oldest, both 23. Mady is studying civic engineering and Milton is studying orthodontics.

In Guatemala there are very large disparities between socioeconomic and "racial" classes - those Guatemalans of primarily indigenous Mayan ethnicity comprise the poorest socioeconomic class, tend to live in the more rural (read: impoverished) areas, and face a lot of racial discrimination. Their recent (past 500 years) history is not unlike that of Native Americans in the US. During the 36-year armed conflict/civil war, in the 1980's, nearly 200,000 Guatemalans, 80% of whom were Mayan, were killed in one of the worst government-led genocides seen in the northern hemisphere during that time period.

This background helps explain why, today, it is only very well-off families who can afford to send their children to University, have them live in a boarding house, and not have to work while in school. In that sense, the students here are very much like young 20-something students back in the states. They all have cell phones, listen to popular music from the US, dress in very similar fashions, and like to party and go out with friends. Cesia and Jullian present the other side of the story, having started labor-based work at a young age out of necessity, and don't have the same opportunities for education.

In the setting of this class system, what is very interesting about this living situation is that my host mom, Sandra, appears to be of indigenous Mayan background - she and Margarita could pass for mother and daughter. However she has clearly had more socioeconomic opportunities than the average Guatemalan and is very well-educated and very well-off financially. Sandra is a biochemist and works in a local lab along with her husband, Jorge. They may actually own the lab, I'm not entirely sure. Jorge keeps track of data and back-office documentation, Sandra "is the one that draws the blood samples and looks through the microscope" as Jorge tells me. Jorge is retired, he had another profession in the past but I'm not sure what it was. He's an interesting character as well, very outgoing, talkative, and tall, which is unusual around here. Sandra is clearly the head of the household, which is another rather interesting dynamic here because the culture is so masculine-dominant. I actually didn't get to meet her until lunch yesterday because she works long hours and generally doesn't come home for lunch like Jorge, and I kept having evening events and not being home for dinner. When she's in the house, the feeling is almost like you're in the presence of the ruling monarch, and she's holding court. Everyone just gets a tad more formal and straightens up.

Everyone in the house gets very excited whenever I mention that I live in Boston (and that's all the time because it's the 2nd or 3rd question when folks first meet me). Apparently Sandra has spent time in Boston, and has a second house in Roslindale, MA, although I'm very fuzzy on the details.

Mady has been really quite awesome, she and I clicked right away and our meal times match up pretty well so we chat over breakfast and lunch. She's patient with me when I take a while to get my words and thoughts out, and doesn't mind speaking slow or repeating something. She helped me get the password for the internet and as soon as I brought out my computer, she hopped online and added me as a facebook friend. We were going to try and go to El Cuartito today because she's never been, but our schedules didn't seem to connect. Although I requested at school to be placed with a new family when I return from the Mountain School after next week, I hope Mady and I can stay in touch and hang out some more at some point.

Las ollas pequenas!

I found them! The little spice pots! The first Sunday of every month (that would be today) is the local market day in Parque Central. Maggie texted me at noon to say she thought she'd found my pots, and ten minutes later I was happily pawing through a small pile of them. Here's what I was looking for:

They are wee! I couldn't resist the pitchers either.

For size comparison, here's a couple in my hand

I also found some other "medium sized" or, maybe "normal small sized" bowls and grabbed a few of them too - photo below.

While I was taking photos of my little pots I also paused to take some photos of my room. And then when I uploaded them to my computer I found some other pics I had taken of the "mountain" that I look at out my bedroom window. So enjoy a few more pictures of my current life, albeit a bit tardy in being posted.

Another close-up for some detail. Aren't they just the cutest things?

Other fun news from today, I got to try some Pollo Campero. This is apparently a weekend of fast food for me. Pollo Campero is a fried chicken fast food joint originating in Guatemala (although I think you can find a few of them stateside in Texas and/or California). Think KFC, but better. My host sister is supervising a play date between her son and one of his friends from school and stopped at Pollo Campero as a treat for lunch, so it's also what I got for lunch. I would say that the chicken is better than KFC (although, that's not too hard) although the fries and coleslaw are kind of sub-par. The ketchup is rather interesting, it's sort of like a mix between US ketchup and bbq sauce. It's rather tasty.

I also got brave with my food excursions at El Cuartito today. Normally I stick to the chocolate con leche (hot chocolate with milk) which is delicious. But today is a bit on the warmer side, so I opted to finally try one of their smoothies - mango, to be exact. Also delicious. Next on my list: Iced Chai Frappe. Seriously, I heart this place.

Ok, enjoy some more photos...

The other bowls I found. They're not that big, but bigger than the little spice pots

Mi escritorio! (my desk) - with my market finds and water supply

Mi cama (my bed). My host mom gave me fresh sheets this week. They're awesome :)

The other corner of my room with my dresser that I don't use. You can see my pack on top that I live out of. And my dirty clothes pile.

This is the view from outside my bedroom door. I'm on the second level of the house and look out out over the rooftops to a mountain.  Maybe it's just a hill, I can't tell. From school's roof I can almost see my room - it's obscured by another building structure, but it's not far.

That same mountain with the clouds coming in over the top of it. This was one morning that I just thought it looked really pretty.

Closer zoom on the mountain in clouds

This is from our hike in Concepcion. We were halfway up a steep hill on our way to a Myan ritual site. We got a really nice view of some of the farmland and the towns below us (Concepcion and San Marcus, I believe)

This shot is just to the right of the one above, you can see out across the valley to San Marcus (I think). Both towns are nestled in this valley ringed in mountains and volcanoes - but that's every town here in the highlands region

Further left, the hillside/mountainside opposite us. These would be the outskirts of Concepcion. After we visited the Myan ritual site we went to hang out at the midwifery clinic which was awesome.