I will admit that I have no valid excuse why I have not posted in over 2 months other than I got caught up in working at the project and basically forgot about this blog. Is that valid? I finally buckled down and started writing after my father and some other friends (who knew people were actually reading this?) requested an update, as well as the fact that I am stuck in the US with little to do, so I might as well...
Hamilton Women's Lacrosse
Since I left for Guate in the beginning of March, I spent all season hearing of HWLAX's incredible success by reading write-ups on the website, watching live stats online, and listening to livefeeds via itunes. And occasionally chatting with some of the current players. Up until March, I had not anticipated how difficult it would be to not be playing lacrosse this year (which also means not hanging out with my awesome teammates), and I knew in the back of my mind that I just had to see them play at least once. I know it might sound silly, but most do not understand the dynamic of the HWLAX team...I can't explain how important it was to me to see them! To make a long story short, my wonderful parents agreed to pay for me to fly home for a week and watch the girl's play in the NCAA Final Four (flight from Guate-NY are cheap). Although Hamilton suffered a heartbreaking one-goal loss in the championship game, it was amazing to watch such an incredibly talented team play, not to mention wonderful to see all the girls and coaches again.
Volcanoes and Hurricanes
My return flight to Guate was scheduled for Saturday, May 29th, but due to a recent volcano eruption in Guatemala, the airport was shut down. The #1 climbed volcano in Guatemala, Pacaya, erupted on Thursday evening, spewing ash in surrounding villages and reaching Guatemala City, the capital. According to the news, 2,000 people were evacuated from their homes, and 3 were reported dead from falling rocks. As soon as I heard this news, I spoke with American Airlines and they thought the Guatemala City airport would be re-opened on Monday and booked me for a flight then. Well, as of Friday evening (I believe) a huge tropical storm hit Guatemala, resulting in 76 dead, 23 missing, and also forced 73,000 to flee their homes. Parts of Guatemala have received more than 3 feet of rain in the past couple of days! Because of this deluge, the airport is said to remain closed until Wednesday, which is when I have been rescheduled to arrive. What a mess! (To read more about the tropical storm: click here. Thankfully, all of the families we work with at Safe Passage are OK, although there have been several mudslides/landslides in the area. I am praying that they all remain safe.
So, depending on when the tropical storm stops, and when the airport actually reopens, I am stuck in the US, and getting antsy to return back to the project!
A typical week in my life at Safe Passage
I mentioned in my last (2-month-old!) post that there was a possibility that I would be appointed to the head of girls' lacrosse at Safe Passage, which has happened! However, I am also working with the newly implemented Health Education program, which has proven to be both challenging and fun. So, technically I am part of the SP Sports Program and Health Program. Since this is the first year of the Health Education classes, I am learning how to lesson plan and teach as I go- definitely a learning experience. So this is my typical week:
Monday: Play lacrosse with older girls in the morning, eat lunch, play sports with little kids at the campo.
Tuesday: Teach health classes all day, until 7 pm because I stay late to teach the father's we educate at the project. Take chicken but home to Antigua by myself at 7 (slightly sketchy).
Wednesday: Teach health classes all day, last hour of the day: teach exercise classes to the mother's we educate at the project.
Thursday: Teach health classes all day.
Friday: Play sports with older kids in the morning & younger kids in the afternoon.
Saturday: (has yet to happen but is supposed to!) Take chicken bus into the project in the morning and play lax with girls for 2 hours.
Sunday: REST
I love my job! :) It is a combination of challenging, fun, and always is rewarding.
So, instead of describing what I have been up to since the last post, I am just posting some pictures in reverse chronological order. "A picture is worth a thousand words," right?
We read Harry El Perrito Sucio to all of the younger students at the project during our first week of Health Classes. Here I am reading it to the 4 & 5 year olds in the Guardería (Nursery School). One of the cutest things ever. Another one of our Health Classes promoting cleanliness with the 1st graders involved taking soap flakes (that I made by using a cheese grater and bars of soap) and molding them around small toys. The idea was that when they used the the soap, they would have a toy to play with afterwards. Well, it ended up with the kids throwing water on the tables (which were covered in soap flakes), thus making the classroom into a soapy mess. The kids absolutely loved the project, kept telling me how "chilero" (which means awesome) the project was, but the teacher was not happy. This is what I mean when I say teaching health class is quite a learning experience!
Tuk-tuk wars!! Tuk-tuks are the main mode of short-distance transportation in Guatemala. Most have some kind of religious saying and/or name written on them. My mother and I spent a day in another village on the lake, San Juan, and decided to take a tuk-tuk back to San Marcos. While we were chatting with our very nice driver, all of a sudden, in the town of San Pablo, we were surrounded by 4 other tuk-tuks, each with two Guatemalan men in them. At the lake, the Guatemalans speak both Spanish and one of the Mayan dialects, so one of the men who had surrounded us started talking to our driver in Mayan, of course I could not understand what was going on. I was sure my mother and I were going to be robbed. Turns out, the tuk-tuk drivers of San Pablo had some kind of beef with our driver from San Juan-- according to him, the San Pablo drivers thought that he had crashed into one of their friend's tuk-tuks earlier that day, which our tuk-tuk driver denied. The San Pablo drivers allowed our driver to drop us off in San Marcos, but waited for him on the return road--I hope he was OK!!
The weekend we went to San Marcos happened to be the biggest holiday in the small town...which included lots of dancing, music, fireworks going off at all hours of the day, and a fair where they had assembled these sketchy ferris wheels. You couldn't pay me to ride one of them!
My parents came to visit my brother and I for a week. While my brother and father traveled to Tikal for the weekend, my mom and I hit San Marcos, a charming and relaxing village on Lake Atitlán.
Jill, my friend who I met last year in Guate, came to Antigua for Semana Santa. We snuck into the ritzy Hotel Santo Domingo and took jumping pictures by the fountain. Received funny looks from the guests.
Due to the fact that we were unaware that all public transportation was closed on Good Friday, we ended up taking a surprise detour to the lovely beachside town of Tela (too bad sarcasm doesn't make sense here, but the "lovely" is sarcastic). We left Utila on Thursday and didn't get to Antigua until Sunday. I have some crazy stories that must be told in person about our trip on mainland Honduras. Involves a nighttime chicken bus ride (tourists are always told to never take a chicken bus at night-we really had no choice), a machete threat, a dead body, and a man with a gun. Glad to be alive (and unharmed!) after all of that!
Highly recommend traveling to the Bay Islands. Here we are on Utila.
Semana Santa Vacations: We had a week of for Holy Week, so we traveled to Honduras. Quite the adventure. Here we are at the Copán Mayan Ruins.
A few weeks before Semana Santa (Holy Week), some of the kids started to bring in dyed chicks like this one. Apparently they were being sold at one of the schools for 1 Quetzal (approximately 12 cents). My sponsor child Elías brought one in that the teacher only discovered when she asked him to take his classes out of his backpack. He had simply put the chick in his backpack to transport it.
The Bowdoin support team took my younger kids to AguaMagic, one of the water parks in the country. The kids loved the waterslides, especially Dillan here; I must admit that the slides were quite scary! (I only went down once!)
This is 10-year-old Elder. A support team from Bowdoin College directed activities in our class for a week. We made paper-mache covered balloons, and this one turned into a hat. Elder's brother Marcos (13) is also in this class. About a month ago, after they had been absent for about 4 days, they told me (surprisingly non-chalantly) that the reason for their absence was that their 19-yr-old brother had been murdered... Found out later that they live in La Peronia, the 2nd most dangerous neighborhood in all of Guatemala.
