“A dog is just a dog here”

OK, I have mentioned many times my shortage of time here to blog and in my last week here, it will absolutely be no different – I’ll probably be even more busy.  So I think this will be my last blog post unless I get an irresistable urge to blog this weekend or something.  And I think it will be short too.  But sometimes I tend to ramble.  

So I went to Semuc Champey last weekend.  Man it was sick place.  It took 8 hours to get there on Friday, then we set up our tents in the rain, chilled for a bit then slept.  We only had 3 people per tent and the tents were bigger than Acatenango (not saying much), so it was way better.  We took like 4 or 5 different modes of transport to Semuc and one was a 2 hour shuttle bus.  One girl, Nativia, brought her dog with her and there was no room in the shuttle so they put her dog on the roof of the shuttle with the luggage.  I think Nativia thought somebody would be up there with her, because the guy said somebody would be, but apparently there wasn’t and at one point the dog fell off the back!!  We all gasped and were shocked and worried and everything then a guy jumped out and grabbed the dog (who was limping) and was about to throw him right back on the roof.  Then Nativia kind of flipped out and demanded to sit up on the roof (it was kind of gated in) with the dog.  I was talking to a Guatemalan on the bus and we had a conversation where he explained something like “Thats weird that you guys care so much about dogs in the US.  For us, dogs are just dogs.  You treat them like family, but they are just dogs here.”  Another pretty big cultural difference between here and home.  I can’t imagine how I’d react if that happened to Nikki!! (ok, and maybe sparky too)  I wanted to blog all about the different cultural differences, but never got to it, but I’ll be glad to talk about it when I get home.

So, Saturday we spent the day at Semuc Champey which was sweeeeet.  We spent the day hiking, going through caves, swimming, tubing, it was awesome.  I have a ton of pics but haven’t uploaded them and like I said I’m somewhat pressed for time.  So I’ll put them on my iphone and show you them in person when I get home.  Just ask.  Then another 7-8 hr bus ride home on Sunday.  

So its my last week at the project.  😦  I’m already getting a lot of crap from my teacher, Elsa, for leaving.  She keeps calling me “feo” haha.  My students have been giving me a hard time about it too, especially one named Maria in the afternoon.  Her and Elsa make me feel so bad about leaving!!  I’ll be glad to come home still though knowing that I’m pretty certain to return to Camino Seguro in the next 5 years at least (possibly as soon as 1 or 2 years I think).  I told my students that which please them a little.  Tomorrow, I’m going to introduce the idea to my older students about starting the web camera program.  

OK, I’ve been very PC (way more that I am in real life) in this blog since I’ve been here, but I just got back from a night out, am a bit drunk and am about to close this out.  I hope you all have enjoyed reading about my times here as much as I’ve enjoyed sharing them with all of you.  I do have way more to tell.  My main purpose for the blog so people wouldn’t ask me “so, how was guatemala?” when i come back because from reading this you all know that’s is a question with a 12+ hour response.  I will be very excited to talk about my trip when I come home, but I just hope some of you already get a general idea of my trip and can maybe ask me about more specific things that I’ve already mentioned or alluded to that really interest you.  I will be so happy to elaborate.  And lastly, I see how many people have visited my blog and am really happy so many of you have frequently visited throughout my time here.  It makes me feel happier and closer to home than you can know.  And in one week, I will be there in the flesh!  Look forward to seeing you all again!  Hasta luego!

Only 1 week left!

I’ve mentioned that it has been hard to find time to blog lately.  There is always so much that I want to write about too, but I usually end up forgetting stuff or leaving it out.  So I started writing little bits each day that way I wouldn’t forget.  Great time to decide on that Billy with only 2 weeks left.

 

Monday was pretty cool.  Last week I spent good chunks of 2 days helping one student study for a math test involving areas of objects inscribed inside other objects, which was not simple material.  He showed me on Monday that he got a 40/40 on the test!  Ahhh how incredible!  I mentioned to my volunteer coordinator my idea of getting a webcam for the program so volunteers with special skills could still help students after they leave if they want to and she sounded optimistic about it being a good idea.  J

 

My week with the students is actually over; this was a short week.  Thursday we have family day where no students attend and Friday is Guatemala’s Independence Day, so there is no school.  This has been a pretty tough week.  My teacher has been out all week, so it has been Evelyn from the computer room and myself with our students.  The morning students were pretty badly misbehaved on Monday, but were slightly better yesterday and today.  It was tough though.  Luckily my morning class never gives me any problems and I get to help them with advanced math that really makes me feel well utilized.  I helped one student with the Law of Sines and quickly taught polynomial division to another volunteer that way he could teach it to his student Dulce who I’ve helped before.  Dulce – what a cute name!  It means like candy or sweet in Spanish and her name suits her perfectly.

 

So I’ve been so busy here that I’ve been really out of the loop with US and Guatemalan news.  I just heard about the swine flu on Sunday I think after 80 people had reportedly died from it.  People have worried about me here given my close proximity to Mexico where a lot of people have died from it, but I was told today that only 1 case has been thus far reported in Guatemala and I guess its pretty easily treatable?  My program is taking a lot of precautions with all students showing any symptoms at all. 

 

And although I haven’t reported on it, the violence here is not getting better really.  I saw a headline on the front page of the Prensa Libre (newspaper) last week that translated to something similar to “Organized Crime Threatens 80 government officials”.  It got into detail about a few recent assassinations of government or police/military officials that were trying to crack down on organized crime too.  Other volunteers were talking this past weekend about a former volunteer who is an incredible idealist and wants to start like a guerilla army to take over governments and countries that he deems corrupt.  Haha, we laughed a little at the extremity and outlandishness of the idea, but I can’t say that I haven’t had similar thoughts.  Seeing and meeting the people here who have to live with this everyday of their lives makes you really want to do something about it – even if it is a little crazy and ridiculous.

 

So, only 5 more days left with my kids at the project!  L  I am excited to come home though and still pretty certain that I’ll return back here sometime.  I’ll probably bring my camera to school with me a few times next week to get as many memories as I can which I’ll be able to share with all of you as well.  This weekend, I’m leaving Friday for a place called Semuc Champey, which is supposed to have cool camping, caves, waterfalls, and natural hot pools.  Don’t really know what to expect yet, but I’m going with a group of like 8 other volunteers and I’ve heard from many that it’s a “must see” in Guatemala, so should be fun!  I’ll let you all know when I return!  Hasta Luego!

 

And I guess I’ll throw in this pic from today.  I got the hair gel out for one of my morning students, Juanita, and let her give me a chapin hair-do.  Luckily I had my cell phone on me so I got a picture of it.  

Volcan Acatenango: 3,976 meters of adventure

on the truck ride to the mountain

taking a little break

chillin at a descanso with jakob

me climbing a tree

evan sheltering from the hail

the rain forest

the pouring rain!!

a little before sunrise

the sun rising above the clouds

the final peak

a shot from the top of the main peak

smoke coming from fuego!

Where do I begin…

 

I guess at the beginning.  So, myself along with 5 friends from Camino Seguro (Tristan, Jakob, Evan, Lizzy, and Lily) all decided to hike Volcan Acatenango together this weekend.  We saw some trip packages for $80 that included transport, food, tent, and a guide.  Well my friends basically said screw that, we can buy food for $10, transport for under $10, and we can do it without a guide.  Not that any of them have ever hiked it before, but their Lonely Planet book has a couple paragraphs on how to.  Evan, Lily, and Lizzy brought a tent with them while the 3 of us just brought a tarp to sleep on.  We weren’t anticipating that the rainy season would have started so soon and were told it only rains for like an hour per day during the rainy season, so figured we’d be fine.  You’ll see how that turns out.

 

We left Antigua around 9am yesterday and took a camioneta for Q3 each to San Miguel Duenas, which is about 13km from Acatenango’s trailhead in La Soledad.  From there we talked to some locals and we were told we could walk to this bridge and hitch a ride with a pickup driver for Q10 ($1.25) each.  So we walked there, tried for like a half hour to hitch a ride with no luck.  Then I started walking around asking for a number for a taxi and nobody had any!  Then I saw a truck driver and asked if he’d give my friends and I a ride there and he agreed to for Q10 each.  So we got in, did our best not to squish the vegetables in the bed of his truck, and we were on our way up our ascent of Volcan Acatenango at 11am.

 

It was a really nice mountain kept up very well by whoever is in charge of doing so.  There was not really much trash along the hike and there were 5 “Descancos” which are little huts to rest under throughout the first half of the hike.  Most of the first half of the hike was like a rain forest – lots of cool trees and it was very damp.  3 hours later or so of hiking passed and there was a cabin there for resting.  We stopped there for like an hour I guess (?) I’m not sure though because apparently I fell asleep for 10 minutes or so.  After that it got really tough.

 

We saw a couple seemingly experienced guys coming down who said that we were about 2-3 hours away from False Peak where the fog was really thick and we had to stay close together and wouldn’t even be able to find the Main Peak.  So we kept going and soon after we were in the clouds and man was it hard to see.  Tristan estimates we could probably only see like 30 ft around us, I actually don’t remember that well I was mostly just looking down at one foot in front of the other.  It started to get colder and windier, then it started HAILING out!  We hiked through about 15-20 minutes of slightly painful hail, until we hit some pretty hard rain.  We were still in the clouds so couldn’t see much.  We had no clue how far the summit was. 

 

Eventually we got out of the forest’s tree line and it was really gloomy looking dead trees and a lot of fog/cloud.  Still couldn’t see the summit and we were getting really tired, wet, and it was probably around 4-5pm so we were getting nervous about darkness.  The idea of returning back down to the cabin was mentioned once or twice, but we were determined to attempt to find this peak before dark.  It was very cold, very windy, and foggy, but at one point I was pretty certain I could see the top and I screamed that I think we found it and I think started sprinting up despite how difficult it was in that altitude.  WE MADE IT!  Volcan Acatenango False Peak, 3,880 meters, around 5 or 5:30pm.  We all started celebrating like crazy.

 

Freezing, in the fog, rain and wind, we ran around trying to set up the tent and get our packs under the tarp. Like I said, we were originally planning on sleeping on a tarp haha, but we were quickly told to just pile into the tent that Lily, Lizzy, and Evan brought. It was a 2 person tent that ended up having 6 people in it all night. It took us about 20 minutes to set up the tent and then we all piled in.  Oh my, how crazy.  It must have been one of the most uncomfortable times I’ve ever been.  The 6 of us could not possibly all fit, so at all times at least one but mostly multiple people were laying on top of eachother.  Since we were all so squished after such a long hike, so many of us got muscle cramps in our legs which we’d scream in agony about, but not be able to do anything because there was no room to stretch our leg out!  It was actually quite hilarious and we all started laughing every time it happened which was a few times per hour.  I can’t say enough about what an awesome group of people I went with.  Despite how cramped, cold, wet, and smelly (I cannot emphasize that word smelly enough) that tent was, not a single serious complaint was made.  We laughed the entire time and despite how uncomfortable it was, it was an experience we all said were so happy had happened and was very fun.

I ended up bringing nothing more than a good amount of warm clothes and a beach towel for sleeping!!  Haha!  Imagine if I had to sleep outside with that!  Wow…  Everybody else at least had sleeping bags.  So I was incredibly cold inside that tent.  Somehow, I found a position in the corner of the tent that I was getting very wet because I was leaning against the side, with only Evan’s head on my legs, yet I managed to fall asleep for an hour or 2.  I woke up and nobody else had slept and somebody questioned, “How is it that Billy – the coldest and wettest of us all and only one not to bring a sleeping bag – is the only one who has been able to sleep?!”  How did they know I was the coldest of them all?  I was violently shivering, while awake and in my sleep.  I started to get worried at one point that I might get pneumonia, but realized there wasn’t much I could do about it and that I’d get over it eventually haha.  Its crazy what good spirits we all had about the situation haha.  Luckily, I’m fine now.  I ended up falling asleep and waking up a few more times, then we all fell asleep pretty soundly around 2am I think (I know I did). 

I wake up and see that its 4:51am and know that the sun is about to rise soon.  Tristan, Jakob, and I get up and head outside where it was freezing to catch the sunrise.  There were a ton of clouds that we were above, so it wasn’t the beautiful thing we’d ever seen, but it was still a nice view of the sun breaking through the clouds behind the top of Volcan Agua above the clouds as well.  We could now see the area around us and see the Main Peak of the Volcano.  We were all really tired, cold, lazy, and weren’t sure if we were going to go to the top or not.  Some people said they didn’t want to, I said I would if others would, but wouldn’t mind heading down too, but Jakob said that he really wanted to – he didn’t want to have gone through this to have “almost” made it to the top of Acatenango.  Suddenly, I said, “That’s right, lets go!”  And the 2 of us were off.  A guide book said it was about an hour hike from where we were, a couple chapines tenting up there as well said about an hour and a half, and Jakob and I made it there in 36 minutes.  Man, that was a TOUGH 36 minute hike.  Although only about 100 meters or so, we were trudging though just as it was described about knee-deep of volcanic ash in a really high altitude.  But we got there, 3,976 meters high, spent maybe a half hour up there, walked around the crater, caught a couple glimpses of Volcan Fuego spewing smoke, and made it back to our campsite in a total time of about an hour and a half.  Towards the end, we thanked eachother for going because neither of us would have gone if not for the other.

 

Then we all headed down the Volcano and made it down in about 2.5 hours opposed to the 6-7 hour ascent.  Talked to some locals and found a bus to bring us back into Antigua just in time for me to catch the 4^th quarter and the OTs of the Celtics’ loss.  Then I took a long, well-deserved nap!

After 7 weeks it finally rained!

Yes that’s right – 7 weeks have passed and today was the first day that it rained for more than 2 minutes.  This has been the dry season and in typically around May starts the rainy season.  So apparently it is now here and one volunteer said it rains for an hour or so EVERY DAY!!  Ugh!  My homestay mom disagreed with that though, so we’ll see, maybe it was an exaggeration.  I’m actually going to hike Volcan Acatenango tomorrow with 5 friends, so I’m very nervous it might rain.  We are spending the night there.  3 of my friends have a tent, but Tristan, Jake and I only have a tarp to sleep on top of.  Yikes…  I’m pretty pumped for it though.  Its a huge Volcano – 3900+ meters – and is right next to and overlooking the very active Volcan Fuego.  Fuego supposedly puts on “firework shows” at night for the people on top of Acetenango. Here are some pictures I took of Acetenango and Fuego during my hike up Pacaya.  There’s a better picture if you wikipedia “Acatenango” though.  

OK, so I don’t have much time to write this.  I have been really busy lately, its so hard to find time to write.  But a few cool things I want to mention have been going on at the project.  

I’ve been doing a ton of math help and reinforcement lately.  Not just in my class, but other classes too.  Today I wrote a 5 question quiz for a different class on sig figs.  Today and yesterday I’ve been helping this really smart kid Samuel in my class with finding the areas of shapes inscribed in other figures.  A few days ago, I helped a student named Alvaro with finding the slopes of curves which is the beginning of Calculus!  Yet another few students with what would be equivalent to Algebra II.  It makes me feel really worthwhile to be helping a lot more with this stuff that I can help with and others cannot or I can more than others.  I want to talk to my coordinator as my departure is approaching about maybe being able to keep helping through internet communication from home if students need it.

So, I heard a huge success story this week.  I met this kid Luis for the first time.  He was apparently in my class, so it was weird just meeting him for the first time.  Listen to this: he is 16 years old and a pilot!!  What a friendly kid too!  He’s talked to me a ton this week.  He showed me pictures of the planes he’s flown!  I, in return, only had to show him a picture of Jenn (my girlfriend) who all the kids like to see.  One is a huge commercial plane called the Airbus A380.  Google image search that plane and you will be so impressed!  He also showed me pictures of a smaller plane and a helicopter he’s flown.  A really important part of the project is asking kids when they are young what they want to be when they grow up.  In the project’s early days, they found that the kids didn’t have many dreams or ambitions; I think they were conditioned to thinking they didn’t have much choice or opportunity.  So this kid Luis said from the beginning that he wanted to be a pilot.  The teachers were taken aback a little at first, but said, OK we’ll try to do the best that we can to help you with this.  From what I understand, he ended up going to a military school and learned to be a pilot.  What a great kid he is too – and only 16!!!

OK, I have to head out.  I took a few pictures at the project today, but haven’t uploaded them yet.  I’ll try to post them sometime next week, but no promises on when exactly as I am busy.  Going to Acatenango tomorrow (wish me luck) so hopefully I’ll take tons of pics and post another blog about my trip sometime early next week.  Hasta Luego!

A day of pictures!

So I brought my camera in to school on Friday to take some pictures of my students.  Man, the kids love cameras!  They all wanted to take it and go around taking pictures.  I think my teacher got a bit annoyed that I brought it in because it was so distracting.  Some students (like this one kid Alex) always want to be on camera, yet will never smile for it!  Haha how weird, huh?  So the main purpose of this post is to throw some pictures up, but I’ll write about some stuff too.

            It was a great week at the project.  For no reason especially, it just was.  I had no real desire for the weekend to come like everybody in the states does during their normal workweeks.  I realized Friday on my walk home from work that I had not a single plan for the weekend because I hadn’t even been thinking about it.  Friday was so much fun at the project.  My morning class had Compuatacion (Computers) then didn’t have much homework so we did English for a half hour, then I just hung out with the kids (I feel like a friend more than a teacher sometimes with a few of them), played some chess (one kid Alejandro is really good, so I’m trying to teach some others by explain my moves while I play so they can get better), and had a blast with the camera as you can see.

 

 

            As for my afternoon class on Friday, I also did a half hour of English with them then we had Deportes (Sports) for the rest of the day.  Those kids were REALLY crazy about the camera as you can see in the pictures above.  That and my pictures pretty much wrap up my day Friday.  

I had one student in my 3rd grade class (age 10-12) bring in her little 2 or 3 year old brother to school with her one day this week.  It wasn’t show and tell – she was babysitting him.  It was a bit weird.  Like sometimes she’d just leave him by himself when she had to go do something like brush her teeth or go to the bathroom.  I tried to keep an eye on him and make sure he wasn’t scared or nervous or anything, but twice some girls told me that the baby was going to start crying.  OK, finally got my pics uploaded and am posting!  I’ll try to post some videos taken soon!

Some pictures

So, I found out that there were actually a lot of better pictures from surfing (but still not many of my best rides).  Some are some pretty sweet looking wipe outs haha!  I bet you will all enjoy those the most!  I also have another pic of this great float from the AWESOME procession on Good Friday.  They had all the stations of the cross on different floats going by me – it was great and by far the best procession of all of Lent.  Then behind people carried these banners with many famous quotes from the Passion gospels, which were all in Spanish, but pretty easy to understand.  I wish I had my camera for it, but I didn’t so only got a picture of the huge float with my cell phone camera.  There were at least 60 people carrying it.  Apparently some are carried by up to 80 people and this very well could have been it.  OK, here are the pics!  I hope to bring my camera to school tomorrow to take some pics of the kids to share.  

Middle of week 3

I know it’s been a while again since I’ve posted, but I underestimated how busy I really am at the project.  I get up at 6:45am every morning and don’t get home until about 6pm or so.  Then I have some free time to do various errands and stuff, dinner from 7-8, and then its relax time and I’m often pretty tired.  So, this week…

            Actually, first I’ll talk about last weekend.  One night I went out to this popular gringo bar called Monoloco.  I’ve gone there a bit since they have a lot of TVs with American sports on.  It is very gringo there though and I actually don’t like that so much haha.  But anyways, I met the owner of the bar that weekend.  His name is Billy (already knew he must be an awesome guy) and he’s from Virginia, but his family grew up in R.I. so is a big Boston sports fan and the whole bar is decorated with Red Sox stuff.  Makes me feel a little bit at home.

            So anyways, my 3 friends and I got to talking about being volunteers at Camino Seguro.  He said he actually knew Hanley Denning who is the founder of Camino Seguro.  Billy first came to Guatemala years ago and was volunteering in the same project as Hanley.  2 days into the project, they had a conversation like this:

Hanley: “Hey, what do you think of this project?  I don’t feel like the kids really need us that badly.” 

Billy: “Ummm… I don’t know.” 

Hanley: “I think I might try to do something more worthwhile.”

Billy: “Umm… OK, go for it.”

Then she quit and started Camino Seguro.  He said he has such great respect for her and was friends with her and that “anybody who works for Hanley’s program is a friend of mine” and bought the 4 of us 2 liters of beer. 

            This week has been good.  It’s crazy how fast it’s flying by – its flying by way faster than my week off last week did.  I can definitely say that a week of work has never gone by faster than a week of vacation in my entire life until now.  Anyways the past 3 days have been pretty good.  All three days I’ve helped both my morning and afternoon classes with English.  My teacher doesn’t speak English, so I’m a pretty useful tool there since all the students are studying it in school and have a ½ hour of it at Camino Seguro daily.  As for math: Monday, I helped somebody from another class with solving equations of 1 variable with all different denominators.  Yesterday, I helped a couple students with solving systems of 2 equations with 2 variables.  Its stuff that juniors at SHS learn and many struggle with.  I cannot tell you how difficult it was trying to teach those 2 things in Spanish haha!  They seemed to understand decently though, I was sure to ask “Comprenden?” often to make sure.  I gave them all examples too which they did not perfectly, but with only few minor errors, often not even from to the new material.  Today, my morning class was small and pretty set with math, but I did a LOT of multiplication homework checking and helping with my 3^rd graders in the afternoon.  Man, they really tired me out today. 

            During a meeting this morning, our volunteer coordinator asked for suggestions for new volunteers.  One girl who has been here a while suggested discipline training.  She said, “Many people think they all come from unpriviliged backgrounds and they just need some TLC, but we’re not doing them right if not disciplining them when misbehaving.”  It kind of struck me then how right she was.  I don’t feel like I had been doing much disciplining and today I started to be a little more strict with them.  I can’t get on them for everything, I swear literally not a minute goes by without a punch or kick or hair pulled, but if somebody was being really dangerous, disrespectful, or not listening to what I said I pulled them aside for a private conversation.  I wasn’t harsh and they were very respectful and took it well!  I think it was just once and he hugged me right after.  The other time I almost did the girl immediately did as I previously instructed instead.  I’m glad Nellie made me realize that today because otherwise I may not have realized what a disservice I would be doing to the students by just playing and loving them but not providing them with the very necessary occasional discipline.  OK, that’s it for now, I’ll try to be more frequent in my postings, but can’t make any promises.  Hasta Luego!

Making Alfombras during Semana Santa

I’ve read that the city of Antigua is the biggest tourist attraction in the world during “Semana Santa” which is the Holy Week of Christianity.  Antigua is a very Catholic city while only having a population around 40,000, it has at least 6 enormous and beautiful churches.  It seems odd to have 6 enormous churches in a small city area-wise of only 40,000 people, but most of them are reconstructions of old churches back from the 1700’s when Antigua was not only the capital of Guatemala, but the largest city in Central America.

            So, why is it such a big tourist attraction this week?  Aside from the general beauty of the town, every Sunday during Lent, one church has a “procesion” which is a huge parade that goes through the part of the city near that church.  The parade is enormous, with hundreds of people, a large band, and giant religious floats (carried by 20+ people often) of icons like the angel appearing to Mary, Jesus carrying the cross, etc.  All the people that live on the path of the procession make these “alfombras” which are beautiful decorations on the street out of their choice of colored sawdust, plants, vegetables, and/or flowers.  The procession then walks over the alfombras and it gets immediately swept up haha.  Other Spanish cities and countries have processions during Lent, but during Semana Santa in Antigua, there is not only a procession on the Sundays, not only every single day of the week, but MULTIPLE processions every day of the week.  There was a big one that started at 5am today and goes until 3pm.  There are others today starting at 2pm and 4pm.

            Building these alfombras is no easy task – you can see in the pictures above that they are incredibly elaborate and they take many hours to construct.  Yesterday was a procession of La Iglesia de San Francisco which is right near my house.  So I headed out of my house at like 9am yesterday and saw them constructing alfombras as close as right outside my door.  I happened to see a couple people I know checking them out and taking pictures and asked if I wanted to come along.  So I did, we walked maybe 1 short block until I saw 3 people I know helping make an alfombra for a nearby family.  I thought that was pretty cool and they asked if I wanted to help.  I was pretty pumped about getting to help (while incredibly nervous I’d ruin the whole thing) so I did and helped for about 3-4 hours save a half hour break to run a couple errands, which were my only original intentions for the day.  It required a good amount of careful, detailed work, but was a lot of fun too.  Some people were coming and going helping and I’d say it took probably 20 people more or less to do the whole thing with a lot of tourists taking pictures during.  My entire time there, I only worked on half of the entire alfombra with a group of 7-10 people or so.  OK, I’ve got a ton of pictures included with captions and that will pretty much tell most of the story itself while being way more interesting.  All I’ve got left to say is that you’re no longer the only artist in the family, Chrissy!! 

 

finding paul and maria working on the alfombra

me first joining in

tristan and paul fixing things up

part 1 (of 6) finished. that took a lot of work haha

2 parts finished! que bonita!

tristan and rory working on the crown

tristan and i working on the crown

the finished logo for Montserat Futbol Club

finished product

francesca proud of our work

view from wall we were sitting on

us chilling on wall waiting for procession

the alfombra after the procession

this alligator is made of bread. its part of the alfombra for a local bakery

float of jesus carrying the cross

“Reina del cielo” Queen of the Heaven

Surfing in El Salvador

I’m sure tons of you have been going CRAZY wondering why I haven’t posted in a whole week!  Well your lives can resume as normal now that I’m back in Guatemala and have a few posts in mind that I’d like to get up.  First and foremost is my Monday – Wednesday trip to El Salvador to learn how to surf!  I’d like to say first, that the day of my last post, 133 people not including myself (I wonder how many were my Mom though…) visited my blog in that one day!  That’s the most yet.  I can’t describe how good that makes me feel; I really appreciate all of you caring enough to check up on my trip.

 

So we went to this beach called El Zonte and stayed in a hotel called Horizonte (pretty clever).  It was a gorgeous beach – the first time I’ve ever actually seen the Pacific Ocean!  The hotel was gorgeous too.  It was a 4 hour drive, then we arrived Monday and had our first lesson like 3 hours after we arrived.  I don’t know if this is the normal way, but we started learning to stand up on “the whitewash” which is waves that had already crashed.  I got up a few times, then I think accidentally, I stood up on a real wave that had not yet crashed.  I fell maybe a second after I got up, but my instructor was like “Yeah!  You got a real wave!” and I did real waves from there on out.  The town of El Zonte is absolutely tiny – I think there are only 2 streets – and there was no night-life at all.  The town was dead at night and we were asleep by 10pm.  We met a few Salvadoran people who were real friendly.  One of the guys we chilled with for a while was just vacationing there from San Salvador and he mentioned that he liked this beach very much because there weren’t many gringos.  So of course I jokingly responded “Que?  Tienes una problema conmigo?” and he laughed and said “No, no muchos gringos.” And mentioned that if there were a lot of gringos with all their money there, then the places would jack up their prices.  Made sense to me.  The food really was phenomenal and incredibly cheap too!  I think it was the best food that I’ve had in my 5 weeks in Central America.  And El Salvador has a popular beer called Pilsener that is better and cheaper than Guatemala’s Gallo.

 

The next morning we had our second lesson and I wasn’t so pleased.  There were 6 of us taking lessons and 3 instructors.  I think the entire 90 minutes I got less than 10 pointers said to me by an instructor.  I was working on the real waves and I didn’t get up once the entire session I don’t think, yet still I got very minimal instruction for improvement.  My friend Tristan was seeming to get it a little quicker than I and gave me some pointers.  Then we practiced a little after, still didn’t get much, but watched a lot of surfing during lunch.  I mean a lot.  I think I started to pick up some things from watching them because we had our afternoon lessons and I still didn’t get that many pointers from the instructors (maybe 10 or so), but I got up a few times!  I was pumped.  Its hard for me to distinguish between the times I got up that afternoon and the next morning, but I probably got up maybe 6-8 times total during my trip including a few which I rode all the way to shore.  Unfortunately the photographer didn’t get pictures of any of them!!  One time Tristan and I were riding the same wave and were close enough we could almost high five.  That was one of the highlights of the trip.  I put up the best pictures of me that the photographer took, but like I said, it wasn’t even one of my top 10 rides I don’t think.  I think it is just the end of one of my rides?  Or maybe a really small wave?  One picture is a shot of Tristan wiping out so you can get an idea of what some of the waves were like (and we were at the more beginner part of the beach). OK, I will be posting again very soon!

surfing!

I have next week off for Semana Santa, so some friends and I are going to travel and are strongly considering going surfing in El Salvador.  We’re going to try to find a beach in El Salvador that is considered for “beginners” or “intermediate”.  Apparently surfing is really big there!  I know some of you have tried surfing before, could some of you give me some recommendations for how many lessons I should take?  I plan to take at least 4 90-minute lessons and possibly do some more practicing during free time.  Think I’ll need more than that to get the hang of it?  Or is it something you really need like more than a week to get decent at?  If I’m going to do it, I’m not going to start and leave not knowing how to surf.  So, please comment below if you have and let me know your thoughts on what it takes to learn!  Thanks!