Watch out, Casa (pics)

Pues, llegamos! Last Saturday after a surprisingly uneventful bus ride we got dropped off in Rio Dulce at Hotel Backpacker. We met up with Michael, a rather strange and drunk Canadian who gave us the lay of the land. Sort of he showed us our room (dormitory style, right above the kitchen), told us our hours (6pm-1am), and told us that we would be busy that night because Saturday is one of the nights the volunteers come over from the orphanage. Baptism by fire, he said.

I spent most of the first evening washing dishes with El Chef in the kitchen. Not so bad, but tiring. It was then out to the bar where 20 or so drunk volunteers painted a rather bleak picture of Casa Guatemala, our soon to be home. Based on that evening and conversations with vols heading out on descanso (vacation), it really sounded like a retched place. It was all about unflushed toilets and pig smelling quarters and lice. By Monday, I was about ready to get a ticket home. But yesterday we finally visited the orphanage, and it was great! Yes, the water is only on in the morning and the afternoon, so toilets don’t always get flushed. Yes, the volunteer house is right next to the pig house, but it doesn’t smell so bad.
And yes, all of the big girls do have lice. But it seems like a nice place. It’s right on the water, the kids get three meals a day, they’re laundry is cleaned, and they’re getting an education. It’s not like anything you would ever see in the United States by any means. There is far less supervision, rules don’t seem to be that tight, and even the little ones have a lot of independence. But this isn’t the United States. It’s Guatemala.


We start working there on Sunday, or Phoebe and I do (Cheka’s joining us later because she has friends coming who are traveling). This is good because working at Hotel Backpacker is bleak. We’re either being yelled at for not understanding what’s going on when it’s busy, or bored to tears, sitting at an empty bar watching the clock. I can’t wait to get out of here.

Once we’re there, Cheka will be an orientador for the Ninas Grandes, which means she gets them up, keeps them fed, keeps them clean and puts them to bed. Phoebe is in charge of an adorable baby, 16 month old Dulce Maria, and I’m going to be teaching Kindergarten. I watched the class for a little bit the other day when I visited, and the kids are cute, but crazy. I think I’m going to have to go in there and raise some hell.

Today we took a crazy clattery chicken bus, complete with chickens, to Finca Paraiso. It’s a cold river with a hot, hot, waterfall. I’m looking forward to more of that…What I’m not looking forward to is work tonight. It’s Wednesday night, and the Vols are coming. Wish me luck.

Exchange rates

As some of you might know, not all countries use the same currency. Strange, I know. Those of you who have traveled have probably had the experience of trading some familar cash for cash that looks a whole lot like monopoly money. We were just getting used to the peso when tada! Here we are in Guatemala with the Quetzal. Mexico was nice because the exchange rate was nice and tidy, ten pesos, one dollar. Move the decimal point, and you got it. And the quetzal? Eight to one. Math is hard.

There is also a sort of hidden exchange rate as well, that being the time exchange rate. A 10 minute bathroom break on the bus-that-sounds-like-it-is-full-of-tin-cans-but-is-actually-just-really-about-to-break is actually a 30 minute period to time for the driver to disappear and the jostled international tourists to roam around looking, well, foreign. Don't get me wrong. I don't mind it. I'm down with sitting outside the bus waiting for it to go. I'm okay with driving in circles for no clear reason prior to leaving, and I enjoy the opportunity to look at cows while a tire is changed. I'm not being cynical. I really don't mind.

Anyway. After a longer than expected ride, we have made it to Guatemala. The land is truly beautiful, at least what we have seen so far from the windows of the bus. It's just so green. No other word for it right now. Just green.

Tomorrow we take our last bus for a while from here in Flores to Rio Dulce, where we will finally be able to set our packs down for more than a few days. We volunteer at Hotel Backpacker for two weeks. This is required of all volunteers in the children's village so that we can, according to the folks running both things, get used to the food and and the climate. Then after two weeks we go across the river and move into the children's village, where we will be...who knows...playing with children, hopefully.

My Life is Complete

Ladies and gentleman, my life is complete. I am someone with ambitions, with goals. I decide that I want something, and I may not be the most direct about it, I may not be the most logical, I may get frustrated or discouraged, but when I have a goal I reach it. And I have reached a goal, and for all intents and purposes, my life is complete. I have seen a monkey. In the wild. Swinging from trees. But that's not enough! Not only did I see one large full grown howler monkey watching us and pooping from the branches, I saw a baby monkey. That's right. A baby monkey. Check plus, life complete. It's so easy to make me happy.

We left San Cristobol yesterday after a hoppin night out on the town. One of my travel companions keeps getting confused about the day, thinking it's always Friday, and with good reason. Tuesday night and we were at a nice little bar dancing our butts of to Mexican ska. Mexican Ska! Cheka, being the stud that she is, managed to get the owner to let the band play for an extra hour! Oh the things you can do when you put your mind to them. See. Goals. Speaking of goals and Cheka being a stud, she just got accepted to COLUMBIA, HER TOP CHOICE SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL WORK! Watch out New York. I mean it.

Right. Leaving San Cristobol. We arrived at our little jungle paradise after five rough hours on the bus (to be fair, I slept the whole time, but I hear that they were five rough hours...). We're staying at a place called El Penchen. It's four an a half kilometers from the ruins, and probably the same distance from town. It looks like a silly jungle movie set with stone paths leading to the cabana rooms. But there's hot water and toilet seats which are my two signals of a nice place to stay. We fell asleep last night to the sound of live music coming from the restaurant, and woke up this morning to the sounds of birds screaming bloody murder.

We decided to walk up to the ruins, and along the way came across a gentleman offering to sell us psychodelic mushrooms. We declined. We joined a tour group for a tour of the jungle and then a tour of the ruins. Our guide was great. Funny, and full of facts. Did you know that the Maya diagnose diabetes by having the afflicted person pee on an anthill? If the ants take to the pee, sugar in the urine. They treat diabetes with clove tea, which he had us smell. He also found the leaf of a plant that smelled like rootbeer. It's used to treat the liver "after too much tequila." Plus he encouraged us to sample the jungle cuisine including termites ("eat the animal, not the clay") and fresh water snails ("you put it in your mouth and it finds its own way down."). Neither of my travel companions was willing to partake, even after my generous offer of a dollar, so we only heard second hand how it was. Our guide also talked about Mayan culture, specifically about the ceremonies wherein young women would pierce their tounges, and young men their penises ("you're out of service for a couple of weeks") The blood was an offering to mother earth, and it was a great honor to do it. To dull the pain? Mushrooms. Indeed, we talked quite a bit about the mushrooms, but alas, no samples. Not the kind of guided tour talk I used to hear on trips with my family...

Tomorrow we leave for Flores, Guatemala. A van picks us up at 6 in the morning, then we get to Betel (I think) and get on a boat. We'll probably spend the night in Flores, and then it's off to Rio Dulce, Casa Guatemala!

Now we're getting somewhere....

We've been in Mexico a little more than a week now, and it seems that we're finally getting things going. We spent the first few days in the first few towns sort of roaming around randomly, aware of the cultural things available to us, but not really doing any of them. Now that we're in Chiapas, in San Cristobol, we're starting to pick it up.

Yesterday we went to Na Bolom. Na Bolom is was started by two people, Gertrude Dudy and Franz Blom. Trudy came to Mexico in the 1940's to escape the perils of WWII. She had been a journalist and held in a Nazi work camp. She began to study the Lacondons, a Mayan group that had been untouched and unconverted by the Spanish. Somehow she managed to make good with the Mayan folks to the point that they allowed her to take pictures of them--something that they're not that big on at all. She met up with Franz Blom, who had been in southern Mexico looking for oil, I believe. According to our tour guide, the spirit of the area came to him and he decided to be an archeologist instead. The two met randomly on an airfield, and moved in together in Mexico City, where they hung out with the likes of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

In the 1950´s, they dropped 1,100 bucks on a big old haunted hacienda in San Cristobol. They used the house as a home base as they continued to study and photograph the Mayan people. Trudy lived in the house until she died in the early 90´s. During their time there they established a foundation to support and educate the Mayan culture. Volunteers come down for six months at a time to work there, working on health projects out in the towns, providing health care to the Mayan people, educating tourists and locals about Mayan customs, and growing and distributin 10,000 trees a year for reforestration. They also print and archive Trudy's 55,000 photographs. Pretty fricking incredible, if you ask me. Check out the website at NaBolom.org. It appears to be all in spanish, but you can navigate around and look at pictures.

Today we went up to Chamula, and indigenous town outside of San Cristobol. It was during carnival, so there was a huge public market and men dancing and playing accordians, and fireworks going off. We saw men wearing white sheep skin poncho type things, and women in dark grey sheep skin skirts tied with colorful scarves. Women and kids were carrying babies around on their backs, which I simply can't get enough of. These little ones seem so content just hanging out and looking around.

Tomorrow we have plans to visit a museum of Mayan medicine which promises a video on Mayan midwifery that is only for the strong stomached. Just my cup of tea.

San Cristobol is very nice. It was really cold and drizzly yesterday, but now it's warm and happy. We spent yesterday evening in a cafe playing snakes and ladders and listening to this duo on guitar and drums. We had red wine and capuchinos with liquor. I swear if a place like this was in the states, I'd be there everyday. The best part of San Cristobol? They serve coffee and alcohol everywhere.

My favorite thing about Puebla...

So, as you might know, we're spending a few weeks traveling around Mexico prior to moving to Casa Guatemala, the orphanage where we'll be working. We've got quite an list of places to visit. We started out on the coast, and then moved in. We spent a few days in a city called Puebla. Do yourself a favor and google it, look at some pictures. There are tons of these crazy gilded catholic churches. We even saw a wedding, complete with cutie patootie little girls holding up the train of the dress. And since it was a public church, we went inside for the ceremony! Crazy! Outside in the plaza there was a baby who had just been baptized, and the grownups were throwing coins for the kids to pick up. It was adorable. The city itself is really nice. All the streets and brick and the sidewalks stone. The travelers I'm travelling with said that it really reminded them of Spain, which makes a lot of sense since it is a colonial town. We left on Saterday, and there was a brass band playing in the zocalo, which I learned is just the term for the sort of central park. It's a useful thing to know because usually you can find banks and food around the zocalo.

All that being said, my favorite thing about Puebla was the walk signals. For don't walk, the little man is red. When it turns green, there's a coundown, and the little man is walking. It's animated. As the time ticks down, the man walks faster, so by the end the little man is jogging. Totally my favorite part of Puebla. That and there was a yarn store and I got some shiny brown yarn. Mixing up the familiar with the new. But mostly just sticking to the familiar.

It occurs to me that I've mostly been writing to myself, since I haven't actually told anyone where this blog is. So, I guess I'll go do that. Welcome!

Feliz Dia!

Valentine's Day in Mexico. There were all sorts of flowers for sale on the street, and when I left the hotel early in the morning to make phone calls, there were men with flowers in the baskets of their bikes. Very charming. I guess people really do it up around here. All these girls between about 13 and 20 were walking around with flowers and plastic windowed pink and red boxes, stuffed animals, decorated bags. Very sweet. On the bus from Zihuatenejo to Cuernavaca, we saw the same thing. People kept saying happy day, in english. it was cute.

And we survived our first long bus ride. It was actaully very nice on a very nice mostly airconditioned bus (yet for some reason all of us still felt sick for a lot of it.) The timing was good though. We drove through all the little towns during the daytime, so we got to see the country. I'm afraid that describing it will just sounds silly, because it's exactly what you'd expect to see--old men in hammocks, little kids chasing dogs, little road side stands selling sweets. Each stop we made there would be a woman right outside the door selling enchiladas or empenadas. We stuck to the tortillas and bananas that we brought with us.

Cuernavaca is pretty nice. It's mostly just a big city. It's striking though how, here at least, commerce is a little different. Instead of the superstores with everything, there are lots of little stores that sell specific things. A store for dills. A store for clothes. A store for paper. A store for shoes. A farmacia just sells medicine. A food store mostly just sells food. Phoebe says it's a little like New York City. There are supermarkets too, to be sure, but there are fewer of them, and the ones that I've noticed are outside of the city.

Today we will get on a bus to go to Puebla, which is a colonial town. Or something like that. I've left it in the hands of Cheka and Phoebe to decide where we're going. I'm looking forward to getting to the orphanage. Travelling is nice, but it feels a little...useless, in a way.

here we are!

so, yes, we made it to mexico! we're in zihuatenejo right now and have some plans for travelling, some of which involve ten and half hour bus rides. which honestly doesn't seem that bad to me. i like sitting in small spaces. and i've always got my cross stitch and books on tape (old lady).

i've never really done a blog before, and chances are it will be exactly what one friend predicted. an entry saying that there's too much to say, and then nothing after that. although, there's not all that much to say. yet. we're here, we confused some lady by wanting to just buy bananas, and we're going other places soon. i think we're all a little out of it, although not in the too tired sort of way, just in the realizing that we're in another country way. which is weird. and not quite real.