My schedule solidifies

Thanks to a couple meetings this week, my schedule has solidified so that I'm busy every weekday morning. I'll be working one day a week in Totonicapán, teaching computer skills to workers in the county school district office. Two days a week, I'll be helping out a 4th grade teacher at Escuela de la Calle, an elementary school for poor and working kids in Quetzaltenango. Another two days a week, I will be traveling to Olintepeque (all of these places are spelled just like they sound) to teach computer lessons in a very small rural school.

I went to NUFED, the school in Olintepeque, today for the first time. First I had to wake up, which was a little tough because I had drunk quite a bit of wine the night before with my landlords and some of their friends. But I did eventually get out of bed and into the shower, and went to the center of Quetzaltenango, where I was scheduled to meet Iojana at 7 a.m. so that she could show me how to take public transportation to the school.

When I knocked on the door of the meeting place, a man across the street began talking to me. I turned to him as he said, "All I know is that I'm supposed to pick up an American who knocks on the door." We agreed that he must mean me, and we introduced ourselves. Jorge was in his late 50s or early 60s, with some silver dental work and a bit of scruff on his face. We turned away from the door and started walking, and he surprised me when he said, "I have my motorcycle."

I have never ridden a motorcycle. In my Peace Corps days, I knew that any volunteer who was caught on a motorcycle would be instantly sent home. Motorcycles, I have been taught throughout my life, are incredibly dangerous things that should never be ridden. Especially in a city like Xela, where traffic is insane and everyone operates on a faint knowledge of right-of-way laws as they cross blind intersections, getting on a motorcycle seemed to be suicide.

Well today I rode a motorcycle, and I didn't die. The ride was about 25 minutes, and I have to admit it was pretty cool. And let me dash anyone's hopes for my safety; I was not wearing a helmet.

So many things happend at the school, and my internet time is nearly up, so I'll have to save more for another day. But this school should be fun, and I'm moving up from my previous developing country computer lab, because instead of having Windows 98 on all the computers and only one computer for every three students, I now have computers running Windows 2000 and a computer for every student. Very exciting stuff.

Volcano Run 2

Saturday's volcano run:

Volcano: Santa María
Peak: 3,772 m (12,372 ft)
Starting elevation: 2,333 m (7,654 ft)
Crew: Connie, my roommate; Carlos, a friend from nearby Totonicapán; Hector, Carlos' cousin; and myself

Start: 6:30 a.m.
Summit: 9:40 a.m.
Descent start: 10:30 a.m.
Finish: 12:10 p.m.

I felt much better climbing this time, especially because I brought three sandwiches and five total bottles of water and Gatorade. The sky was much cloudier and foggier, which made the going easy but also gave us very little scenery.

Death to the Department of Weights and Measures

Ask a Guatemalan man how tall he is, and he'll respond in meters and centimeters. Ask a Guatemalan woman how far she drove, and she'll use kilometers. Ask a Guatemalan child how much water is in the bottle he's holding, and he'll use milliliters. Turn on the TV, and the weather report will tell you the temperature in degrees centigrade. The metric system is alive and well in Guatemala.

Until, that is, you drive by a gas station and see the prices per gallon of fuel. Or when you're discussing physical fitness and a Guatemalan tells you that he needs to lose 20 pounds.

The Guatemalans have adopted a strange mishmash of metric and imperial measurements, and it has led to a great conversation with my landlord. Before I describe that conversation, however, I should repeat as reference a conversation I had with my Moldovan host mother years ago:

Me: In America, we don't use kilograms. We use pounds.
Maria: What? But how do you know how much to get at the market?
Me: We just use pounds instead of kilograms and everyone understands.
Maria: So let's say I go to the market and want a kilogram of beef.
Me: You say, "I'd like two pounds of beef, please."
Maria: Hmmm... (with a look on her face that told me that she disapproved of this entire concept of pounds)

Now flash forward to 2009, when I talked with my landlord, Irwin.

Me: So Guatemalans use pounds here?
Irwin: Yeah. But in the U.S., you use kilograms, right?
Me: No, in the U.S., we use pounds, but most countries use kilograms. In Moldova, for example, they use kilograms.
Irwin: So if you go to the market and you want a pound of beef, they don't understand you?
Me: No.
Irwin: But then if you ask for a kilogram of beef, that's too much.
Me: Well, you could ask for a half-kilogram of beef.
Irwin: No, (smiling) that's too complicated.

Suddenly, I got busy

Things got busy for me this week. This ought to give an idea of what I've been doing.

Monday: Helped my landlords tweak some of the English they wrote for an ad they're placing for their language school. Did some shopping, including buying Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Read most of it that day.

Tuesday: Taught three English classes at CEIPA. Met with my partner teacher, Judith over ice cream, me practicing my Spanish and she practicing her English. Then returned to CEIPA and met Gabriel and some of his video crew. I told them that I was new, that I was here until the end of June, and that I had 10 years of videography experience. They set me up to do some work with them on Thursday. At night, I went to the Royal Paris Café, where I met a Dutch acquaintance, TJ, to watch a Belgian movie in French with Spanish subtitles. We got the gist of it. After the movie, the Guatemalan woman next to us struck up a conversation, and she asked me if I'd be able to volunteer at her organization to teach kids how to use computers. We swapped contact information. When I got home, I finished the Harry Potter book. I want to read more of the series as fast as I can.

Wednesday: My alarm went off at 7:30, although I was up a little beforehand. I took an hour-long bus to Totonicapán to meet a retired teacher, Miguel, who was going to introduce me to the county's school supervisor, Camila. She was busy, so we said we'd come back later. We went to a hotel's restaurant downtown, had some coffee and tea, and then returned. We met with Camila, who spent the first five minutes of the meeting stressing that they couldn't pay me anything. I kept saying that I didn't need to be paid, and I finally got my point across to her by saying, "Nobody comes to Guatemala to make money." Miguel laughed, and continued to laugh about it for the next half-hour. I set up another meeting for Monday morning, when I'll be introduced to the IT team at the district office.

Still Wednesday: Took the bus back from Toto into Xela, and walked into the center of town to find a cheap meal of three tacos and a bottle of water for just over $2. Then I hopped on a bus to Las Rosas, another neighborhood in Xela, where I met with Guadalupe, the head of Escuela de la Calle, another school dedicated toward the problems of child poverty. I offered my services for whatever they needed, and we agreed that I would volunteer as a teacher's assistant a couple or three days a week. He also was going to survey the teachers at the school to see what computer skills they feel they need to learn, and the plan is that I'll do some computer seminars for teachers as well. I headed home, and I'm currently at the internet café near my apartment. Tonight, I'll be attending an Earth Day party organized by some charitable organization whose name I forget.

Thursday: I'll be heading to CEIPA at 8 a.m. to help them film an event. In the afternoon, I should be meeting Gaby (the woman from Tuesday's movie night) to see what can be done about those computer classes. I'm sure something else will come up as well.

Friday: I'll meet with a CEIPA student and some of his friends 9:30 in the morning to talk about private tutoring for them. This will actually pay me something, although I'm sure it won't be much.

Saturday: Volcano? I couldn't go last weekend because of a wildfire, but hopefully I'll have a group eager to go this weekend.

And to think, two weeks ago I was depressed because I didn't have anything to do.

Best graffiti selection for the day

The best graffiti I saw today, translated from Spanish, said:

"Hare Krishna. Sing it!"

Bang

In my three weeks in Guatemala, I've had to adapt very quickly to two Guatemalan tendencies: the number of heavily armed guards walking around, and firecrackers in the morning.

It's nearly impossible to walk a mile in Xela without seeing at least one gun, and I'm not just talking about handguns. Criminals use much stronger stuff than just handguns, so security forces, whether they're police or private security, have had to upgrade as well. The strangest example is at banks, where the man who opens the door for you, smiles, and says hello is also holding a shotgun. Similar situations happen in malls and outside electronics stores, and in nearly any location where a store is receiving a shipment. Shotguns are nearly universally preferred over automatic rifles, which worries me; if the goal is to be able to shoot a particular thief, a shotgun, which is designed to spread its fire across an area, seems to be the worst possible weapon. If I were a security officer, I wouldn't be able to fire my shotgun at a thief because I would worry about hitting innocent bystanders. Evidently, that's less of a concern here, or maybe they're just hoping that the shotguns are enough of a deterrent themselves that they'll never have to fire them.

Another Guatemalan custom sounds like gunfire, but is in fact just firecrackers. Every two or three days, I am woken up by firecrackers around 6:30 in my neighborhood. This is how many Guatemalans celebrate birthdays. Why? I have no idea. I suppose it's safer than shooting guns into the air. But right now, I'm making an official request: On my birthday in three weeks, I'd much rather have a phone call than firecrackers. And the phone call doesn't need to be at 6:30, either.

Martyrs

In the United States, our memory of fallen heroes is incredibly short-lived. As the memories of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and John and Bobby Kennedy fade with each generation, most Americans cannot remember the days or even the months when these icons were killed.

In Guatemala, there is a stronger sense of history, and I witnessed it and participated in it on Saturday. Steve and I went to the city of San Marcos to march on the 11th anniversary of the killing of Monsignor Juan José Gerardi Conedera, a Catholic bishop who was an outspoken supporter of indigenous people in their struggle against the Guatemalan government and was beaten to death with a concrete slab by three soldiers in 1998.

The march was in San Marcos, as it has been every year, largely because of the political biases of the current bishop of the area, who has been receiving death threats since he was appointed about 20 years ago. Saturday's march began near the cathedral in San Marcos, and made its way down several kilometers of major city streets on its way to the center of the neighboring town of San Pedro.

I was impressed by the turnout; before the march even started at 9:30 (people had been told to be there at 8 a.m. sharp, guaranteeing a 9:30 start), there were thousands of people stretching for more than a block. Estimated crowds from previous years average about 10,000 people, and by the end of the march, it certainly seemed like there were that many people, as I looked back at one point and saw the procession stretch more than two blocks. A large portion of the crowd was students who joined from a Catholic high school, and they all wore matching school t-shirts to make their presence of hundreds of students known.

Interspersed in the crowd were pick-up trucks with PA systems, from which organizers led the crowd in chants and also sold t-shirts at cost. Organizers handed out fliers with all of the chants that would be used that day, and the booming voices from the truck used all of the ones on the sheet.

I protested a fair amount in the lead-up to the Iraq war, so I have a decently trained ear for protest chants. Some of them were excellent, such as ¡Gerardi, amigo, la gente está con tigo! (Gerardi, friend, the people are with you!) Another favorite was ¡La tierra no se vende; el pueblo la defiende! (The land is not for sale; the people defend it!) Others were not as catchy, such as the one that decried "indifferent transnational" corporations, which made me certain that chants should never have five-syllable words in them. Another that was slightly eerie was ¡Los mártires no se lloran; se imitan! (Martyrs are not mourned; they're imitated!) and I hoped that 10,000 Guatemalan protesters would draw the line of imitation at being brutally killed. Other chants didn't work at all, such as ¡Antes del individualismo, Jesús convoca a la unidad! (Before individualism, Jesus preaches unity!), which sounds just as unwieldy in Spanish as it does in English. The most resounding chant of all was its most simple: Guatemala, ¡nunca más! Guatemala, never again!

The march ended with a service at the San Pedro cathedral, which Steve and I passed up because there were no more available seats. We walked back to San Marcos and took a bus back home. On the bus ride back, I compared in my mind the importance of this 10,000-person march and thought about the most publicized political movement going on back home; the ideologically vacant and ridiculous Tea Party movement. At least one country knows what to protest about.

Something to do

It may only be for two hours a week, and the pay may be zilch, but I finally have a job.

On Monday, Steve took me to CEIPA, a school for teenage working kids. According to a CEIPA pamphlet I picked up, Guatemala has the highest rate of child labor in all of Central America, with the number of working children between the ages of 9 and 17 just under one million. CEIPA (pronounced SAY-pah) enrolls these kids in school for three years, preparing some of them for high school, some of them for work, and some of them simply to be more educated members of society.

Steve's and my idea was that I could volunteer here for a couple months as an English teacher. I didn't want to step on anyone's toes, like take away work from the current English teachers, so I tread carefully. I remembered my incautious first days as a Peace Corps volunteer, and this time I knew better. In these situations, it's better to be led and see the conditions before outright proclaiming what you want to do differently.

So Monday, Steve and I met Margarita, the school principal, who was enthusiastic about having me. One of the other teachers, she explained, had just had a baby, so Yudiza (Judith), the current English teacher, was working double and substituting for the teacher on leave. Margarita figured everyone would be happy if I took the English classes so that Judith could concentrate on the classes for which she was subbing.

The only problem was that Judith wasn't there on Monday, so we couldn't talk. I agreed to come back on Tuesday afternoon to meet with her, and Steve and I left Margarita's office to talk to some other teachers he knew. While we were talking with the librarian however, the phone rang. It was Margarita, calling Steve to let him know that Judith had just arrived, and we could talk with her. We returned to Margarita's office to meet my counterpart.

Judith is one of the nicest ladies I've ever met. She's likely in her 40s, but has an elementary school teacher's smile that takes 10 years off. She was ecstatic to have me volunteering, and she showed me tests and books to show what level the kids were at. We agreed that I would sit in on her lessons Tuesday, the following day, and then take over for her completely the next week.

The lessons are going to be incredibly low-level, since the kids only have one 35-minute class of English per week. But I'm looking forward to it. In Moldova, I had to work on a strict state curriculum, even if the kids weren't ready for it. Here, since it's a private school, I can teach however I want, and be as basic or as complex as I want. I'm looking forward to creating new visual aids, teaching them song songs, and more.

Although I've already taught my first day with them, I'm going to have to leave that entry for another day, since my internet time is running out. But boy, does it feel good to have something to do, and a partner teacher who's excited about me being here.

Holy Week Pictures

Below are three pictures from Holy Week processions in the center of Xela.


Men carry a float on their shoulders as they round the bend on Good Friday.


Women from the same congregation carry a float with the Virgin Mary on Good Friday.


Jesus makes his way through the crowd during an Easter Sunday procession.

The Volcano Crew

Encouraged by how much healthier I felt and looked after just one time climbing Santa Maria Volcano, I've decided to make it a regular thing. I've started to gather a group for this coming Saturday, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to climb the volcano every Saturday. Let's see how quickly I can get to that fifth notch on my belt.

Easter

Nothing says, "Jesus is Risen" like firecrackers.

That's just one of the many intricacies of Easter here in Guatemala. No serious business gets done all week, such as finding work for an American who recently arrived, and the vast majority of shops have been closed since Wednesday. There have been processions every night, with probably the biggest ones on Friday. I'll post some photos of the Good Friday processions, because words alone can't capture the thousands of people lining the streets to watch hundreds of paraders carry huge floats on their shoulders around the city.

Today I'll focus on my Easter morning. I woke up at 7 a.m. (I get to sleep much earlier without a computer to waste time in front of), did some exercises, showered, and got dressed in the finest clothes I currently own: a plaid short-sleeve shirt tucked into blue jeans, plus my well worn brown boots and blue argyle socks. I'm afraid that's as classy as I get these days.

I went to the kitchen, and as I started to scramble a couple eggs, Connie, the recent college grad from Tennessee who lives in the room next to mine, opened her door. Connie and I were going to meet my friend Steve at 9:15 to go to the Catholic church he attends. Although I'm an Episcopalian and Connie's a Methodist, we didn't feel particularly tied to our sect for the day. Connie and I talked over breakfast, and then I killed some more time cleaning up the kitchen.

We left our apartment, met Steve, and then walked a little bit further to his church. We came in and sat in the left section, about 25 feet from the band of two guitarists and a drummer, all in their late teens or early 20s, who would be providing the music for the service.

"I'm glad we have these guys playing today," Steve said to us. "There are about six different sets of musicians that rotate, and sometimes there's this one guy who comes in with his keyboard synth, and the music sounds like you're at the circus."

One of the first things I noticed was that the wooden pews we were sitting in had no hymnals, no prayer books, no Bibles, no orders of service, no nothing. I was hoping that I would be able to read along with the prayers to better understand them and to better participate, but I quickly realized that wasn't going to happen. Probably the cost of hundreds of each book was just too prohibitive for the church.

The service started a few minutes before 10, and although there were seats for hundreds of people, nearly all of them were taken. The overflow stood in the aisles.

I'm used to a procession coming in from the back of the church, but the priest and alter boys (and girl) came out of the sacristy, accompanied by a hymn. The tune, played on guitars and drums, was "Oh When the Saints Go Marching In," but the words were totally different, so I was reduced to standing quietly as one of the most joyful tunes in the world played around me.

The mass went much as expected, but because I don't know the right things to say in Spanish, I was only able to chime in with the occasional "amen" or catch on to the refrain of a psalm. My Spanish was good enough to catch that the Gospel was about Jesus' tomb being found empty, but then again anyone coming to church on Easter would know that that's what the reading would be, whether they knew Spanish or not.

The fun started with the sermon. The priest seemed to stress that today, a day of joy and rebirth, was the most important day of Holy Week, and that too often Catholics focus on Good Friday, a day of pain and suffering. The focus of our lives, the priest said, should be on the positive aspects, not on suffering.

His point was clearly lost on a whole host of babies near the back of the church, all of whom started crying in the middle of the sermon. But the mothers didn't take them outside. The babies, easily six or more of them, continued to cry for minutes.

"I guess they don't have Sunday School here," I whispered to Steve.

"Normally, they'd take them outside when they started to cry," he replied.

At that moment, the priest stopped his sermon, and told the mothers, in slightly less direct and more holy language, that they needed to take their babies outside, and that they had "the resources" to make their children happy, i.e. milk. Once the babies had been taken outside and things quieted down, the priest continued with his sermon.

The only other interruption in the service was during the Eucharist, when the neighboring church's Easter procession began. The jubilant band played pleasant background music outside, but the procession's full minute of firecrackers caused our priest to pause the service. The Eucharistic service continued, and bread was served. I asked Steve why wine wasn't served in this church, since wine is usually part of a Catholic service. He said he wasn't sure, but that either it was an extra cost, or the priest didn't want to include alcohol in the service when Guatemala has such a high rate of alcoholism.

The service ended, slightly more than an hour after it had started, and Steve, Connie and I began making our way out of the church. Steve ran into some old friends, as he manages to do just about everywhere in Guatemala, and we talked for a while.

After church, the three of us went to a hotel in the center of the city, where they serve an excellent breakfast buffet. We were too late for breakfast, but we had an excellent Easter lunch anyway.

After the meal, I had only one more errand for the day; I was finally going to get my boots shined. There are usually more than a half-dozen shoeshines in the small central park, and I had meant to have my boots polished before Holy Week. If you had seen them the previous Saturday, coated in dust from hiking up and down the volcano, you would have agreed that they needed a good scrubbing. Add to that my inherited Moldovan fear of people judging me based on the cleanliness of my shoes, and I knew that I needed a shine. The shoeshine worked fast, and within five minutes my boots were sparkling. All it cost was five quetzales, the equivalent of 63 cents. One could argue that I should have gotten my boots shined before going to church, but in the end, they're shined and it's Easter, and that's what matters.

I'm eager to start this upcoming week, because Holy Week had made it impossible for me to establish myself with any sort of work, paid or volunteer. This week, I have a number of meetings that will hopefully find some use for me, either teaching English, training Guatemalans on computers, or working in some other capacity that I haven't imagined yet. Just as Jesus was reborn today, my trip will be reborn tomorrow, when I finally start to add a purpose to my stay in Xela.

Pedro versus the Volcano, pictures

A couple of pictures from the top of Santa Maria Volcano.

Pedro versus the Volcano

I woke up at 4:30 a.m. with a mission. Today, I was going to climb Santa Maria volcano, a dormant behemoth that sticks 3,772 meters (12,375 feet) into the sky near Xela.

I went with a group organized by the language school I live above, so our group was nationally diverse: Irwin, the Guatemalan owner of the school; Miguel, one of the school's teachers; Erick, a Guatemalan friend of theirs; Nirmalie and Judith, two Dutch Spanish students whom I had met the night before; and me. We met downstairs on the street at 5:30, got in a mini-bus that we had hired for the drive, and headed to the outer limits of Xela.

We arrived at 6 a.m. at a field at the base of the volcano. As Miguel told us, there were three parts of the hike. First was a relatively small incline, followed by a medium incline, and then followed by a final steep ascent to the summit. Each part would probably take us an hour each, he said. Guatemalan soldiers, on the other hand, can scale the entire volcano in 30 minutes and be down it in 10.

I hadn't realized how big of a trek this was going to be, or else I might have prepared better. I had good boots on, but I had assumed that there would be open stores in the morning where I could buy a few bottles of water; no such open stores existed, and I was clearly going to struggle for energy with just my breakfast of yogurt with mango and a bag of mixed nuts I had brought with me. I was going to have to tough it out, and maybe get by with a little help from my friends.

We finished the first third of the hike in an hour, and sat around for a few minutes in a field. I asked Erick if I could drink a little of the can of vegetable juice he brought, and he offered me the half that he hadn't already drank. I usually don't like vegetable juice, but I made an exception this time.

We started up the second third of the climb, and Miguel and Erick blazed ahead on their own, while Irwin and I stayed back with Nirmalie and Judith. Holland is one of the flattest countries in the world, and while Judith might have had a little experience climbing, Nirmalie had never been on a mountain. We took frequent rest stops as we hiked for the second hour, because the girls were getting winded easily.

At 8 a.m., after two hours, we started the third and final portion, and my lack of food and water started to catch up with me. I stopped to eat some of the nuts I had brought, and Irwin gave me some imitation Gatorade. This early in the morning is a bad time to feel exhausted, but I was already getting there.

Forty minutes later, I was struggling, and I fell behind the rest of the group. I had to rest every 10 minutes or so, and I was being passed by school kids and middle-aged indigenous ladies in cheap shoes. I kept going, and caught up to Judith and Nirmalie, who were sitting on the side of the path, drinking water and breaking out their sandwiches.

"I'm not going to go any further," Nirmalie said in Spanish. "I have pain in my leg and I have a condition with my nose." There was no way I was going to let part of the group not reach the summit, especially when we had already hiked nearly three hours and had so little left to go.

"No," I said, "you'll go to the top. But let's rest for a while, and then we'll talk about getting up there."

The three of us sat together, making brief conversations with the people passing us. Hiking in Guatemala is a very polite event; you say hello to everyone you see, and everyone says hello back. Anything less would be uncivilized. Eventually, Judith went on ahead, leaving me with Nirmalie, who was terrified of going any further.

After a few more minutes, I coaxed her to start hiking again. And so we went, in two-minute and three-minute spurts, up the volcano. I was far past exhaustion, and Nirmalie seemed to be in a worse state than me. At around 9:30, we arrived at the home stretch, a rocky, treeless final 150 feet. When we finally got to the summit it was like walking into my favorite bar; I recognized everyone there, because I had greeted them as they had passed us climbing up.

We found the rest of our group sitting on the far side of the summit, and sat down with them. I ate the rest of the nuts I had brought, and Miguel poured some water into an extra bottle, from which I drank slowly to avoid cramps.

Within minutes of us sitting down, there was a loud noise, and a huge column of smoke and dust began to rise. The smaller volcano next to us, Santiaguito, had just erupted. I knew that the volcano was active, but I didn't realize it would be active with me looking at it. Everyone crowded toward one side of the volcano to see Santiaguito, and I got up to join them. Seconds later, I heard, "Peter, your bag!" My leather bag, which luckily had been zipped closed, was rolling down a steep slope. I noted where it stopped, about 100 feet below, and told myself I'd get it later, after I had seen the eruption. Everyone in the group took pictures of us in front of the tower of dust, except for me, since my camera was in my bag, 100 feet below. A few minutes later, I hiked to get my bag and came back up.

Earlier in the morning, Erick had asked me if I was a Christian, which I had said I was. It turns out this was a primer for a much longer conversation that we were going to have at the summit. It was by far the most abstract conversation I've ever had in Spanish, as our talk ranged from the legality of marijuana to the morality of alcohol, from the existence of heaven and hell to how good of a basis the Bible is to live your life upon. He told me with certitude that while praying, he had been in the presence of Jesus, and he had also had Satan come to him multiple times and choke him, but that he had pushed Satan away by declaring his love for Jesus. He gave me detailed descriptions of hell, because his friend's soul had once traveled there and come back. He believes in Jesus, he told me, because of these "supernatural experiences" that let him know that God and Jesus are real.

I came from a different point of view, and I said that many Americans and Europeans are currently questioning organized religion. "There are many people in the U.S. who say that they are religious, but they say nothing when our government tortures," I said. "When our government attacks Iraq and Afghanistan, these religious people say nothing and the churches say nothing. This is the reason why I am disillusioned, and this is a reason why many people in America and Europe will say that they are spiritual, but that they don't have a religion."

It was a fantastic conversation, and I got Erick's phone number so that we could meet up again.

After about an hour and a half of relaxing at the summit, we began making our way down. Going down a steep mountain is a different type of challenge than climbing one, but with a walking stick that I had fashioned out of a branch earlier in the day, I wasn't worried. Judith and Nirmalie, however, had never gone down a mountain before, and were very uncertain of the process. Erick went down first, and didn't wait up for us. Judith, slightly nervous, held Irwin's hand for at least the first third of the trip as he guided her down. Nirmalie had Miguel for her hand-holding guide, but was still so scared that for the top third of the mountain, she slid down slowly on her butt. I was the last in line, and I enjoyed the slow pace and the conversation as we made our way down. Being in the back also allowed me to talk to people who were passing us as they came down, sometimes offering an explanation to them as they watched Nirmalie sliding: "She's from Holland; it's her first time on a mountain."

After a long hike, we got to the rest area where we had first stopped for the day. Less than an hour remained before we'd be at the bottom. I started to worry that I was getting seriously dehydrated, so after we had rested for a few minutes, I took off at a fast pace, knowing that the sooner I got to the town at the bottom of the volcano, the sooner I could find a store.

I was dead tired as I sped down the final third of the volcano, and was amazed by the number of people heading in the opposite direction. Lots of Guatemalans, it seems, hike up the volcano in the afternoon with a sleeping bag and camp under the stars at night. I felt different hiking on my own, and people reacted to me differently than when I was with the rest of my Guatemalan and Dutch group. People seemed surprised to see me, a gringo, walking down their volcano alone, and several greeted me in English as I passed them.

After about 40 minutes, I arrived at the bottom of the volcano, and walked into the first store I could find. I bought three bottles of water and three bottles of Gatorade, and drank one of the Gatorades; the rest were for the group when they caught up. Five minutes later, the rest of the group came, and they all smiled when I greeted them with, "Are you thirsty?" and opened up my bag full of refreshments.

After another 10 minutes, we made our way to the bus station, piled into a chicken bus, and made our way home. When I got back to my apartment at 3:30, I took a shower and headed straight to bed. A few hours later, I woke up, ate two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (the first thing I had eaten since the nuts at 10:30 in the morning) and went back to bed again shortly after. I slept extremely well.

Xela (Quetzaltenango), Guatemala

This evening I'm blogging comfortably from the corner internet cafe, just down the street from my new apartment, and at any time my new Guatemalan cell phone might ring. For the first time in nearly two months, I'm settling in.

It didn't take long, once I had decided that I wanted to stay in Xela, which is officially known as Quetzaltenango. (Pronunciation guide: Shay'-luh.) When I got here on Monday, I was instantly taken in by Steve, a long-time friend of my aunt and uncle's who has been living in Guatemala for 29 years. I couldn't ask for an English speaker who knows this country and city better than Steve, and he quickly oriented me to the structure of the city (all the streets are on a numbered grid, which makes it easy) and let me take his couches apart for three nights to arrange them on the ground into some semblance of a bed.

So much has happened in Xela in the past few days that it's difficult to summarize, but I rented an apartment today at Sol Latino, one of the dozens of language schools in the city. I have a room that can best be described as "big enough" and has a dresser, a desk and a double bed. I also share a bathroom, kitchen and common area with the other two residents, currently a Dutch girl who's taking a year off before heading to college and an American girl whom I haven't sat down with yet. I'll post some pictures of the place later, but what I really like about the place won't be captured in the photos. First of all, the price is right; I'm paying only 950 quetzales, less than $120 a month. Second, by living here, I'm instantly part of a community of native Spanish speakers and students who want to practice the language. This lets me hit the ground running and keeps me out of situations in which I'll revert back to English.

My language is coming along nicely, and people are often impressed when I tell them that I only studied Spanish for one semester. My Romanian is helping me immensely, but I often substitute Romanian words for Spanish ones, leaving people wondering when I say that the water is cald instead of caliente. But I experienced a breakthrough today while I was thinking about how I would describe my new apartment to my old Moldovan host family. I thought that I was thinking in Romanian and explaining it to them, but then I did a double-take when I realized I had been thinking in Spanish. It's a step in the right direction.

In short, things are stabilizing here after a turbulent and tiring first three weeks of the trip. My next focus will be to get a job or two, and hopefully find something that will pay enough to offset the rent.

Xela (Quetzaltenango), Guatemala

Before I start talking about Guatemala, I have some important news about Mexico. I can't think of any other way of phrasing it:

I'm adopting a daughter!



In Mexicali, I visited an orphanage, and when I heard about the conditions that kids had to live in there, I couldn't hold back; I had to help. I saw little Pita and thought she was just the most beautiful baby I'd ever seen, and I couldn't imagine her living the next 18 years in a Mexican orphanage. I called a lawyer, gave him a first payment of $500 to start the process, and signed off on some beginning paperwork.

I'm proud to say that by the time I head back to the U.S. in early July, the paperwork will be all done and I'll be able to take Pita back to California with me. Can't wait to show her her first Fourth of July as an American citizen!