Las Chapinas: An Exploration of Guatemalan Culture: I Shouldn't Be Alive

DAY FIVE

My mom was right - plantains are the worst. This morning, Griselda made us fried plantains with beans in them for breakfast, it tasted like a cross between an undercooked sweet potato and a banana that was more brown than yellow. I mostly ate fruit; the cantaloupe here is especially fresh, and it’s probably my favorite.

Speaking of things that are the worst - small children. OK, maybe babies aren’t that bad, but coming back to a room filled with screaming, crying babies after getting to do my dream job of helping teach some of the older girls was incredibly depressing. The problem was that one of the volunteers was sick almost all week, and the other had decided to show up later now that she’s done with her Spanish lessons and is working at the shelter all day. These two things meant that Journey would be alone with all the babies for a really long time, and I felt bad about that, so I offered to help her. But, once I made the decision to go to the baby room, the teacher’s made their schedule for the day, and it didn’t involve anything I could help with, so I was stuck there. I’m pretty sure I’ll be stuck there for most of next week, too. Oh well.

I did get to see what kind of impact helping the babies had, though. One of the girls in my English class the other day is a mother. And it’s the volunteers that keep an eye on her kid that allow her to go to class. I mean, I’ve known that that’s what we’re doing and why, but really getting to see it was different. It meant more.

Since today was kind of a hard day, Journey and I stopped at the McDonald’s on the way home and got a couple of McFlurries. Ah, the taste of the United States. It was familiar. It was needed. It was wonderful.

Spanish lessons were, as always, good. I finished El Principito today. Salvador was impressed by how quickly I got through it, and how dedicated I was. Mostly I was dedicated to finishing it as quickly as possible so that I wouldn’t have to read out loud so much anymore, but I didn’t mention that. For the rest of the time, we talked a lot about our respective cities: Xela and Atlanta. He was really shocked to find out that Atlanta has the busiest airport in the world, and had me answering all sorts of questions on the racial, religious, and economic diversity of the city. I can tell I’m getting better at speaking Spanish, which is great!

Two updates on the whole “Senior Project” part of our Senior Project: we will not be doing vlogs, and we’ll be coming home three days early.

For the vlogs, we’ve run into a few problems, mainly having to do with the shelter and the culture here; no one is allowed to take pictures inside the shelter and post/show them anywhere public for the girls’ safety, and the other is that, since Guatemala is an incredibly conservative country, a lot of Guatemalans don’t feel comfortable having their picture taken. Another problem with that is that we were told never to show our phones in public, since they’re a lot nicer than most phones here and they scream “I am rich. Please rob me”. We would like to avoid being robbed. Taking pictures, much less making videos, has been really difficult because of this. We’ll have to come up with some other way to present what we learned when we get back.

The other news is that we’re now coming home next Friday instead of that following Monday. When we originally booked out flights, the only direct flights home were on Mondays, and we wanted to avoid layovers. Now they’re offering direct flights every day of the week, so we switched to Friday. As much as I enjoying being in Xela, I am excited to be getting home sooner; that extra weekend here was kind of unnecessary. We both miss our families, don’t want to worry about having to stretch our money and clothes to last a few more days, and want to be back in time for Senior Week!

Tomorrow, Journey and I will be climbing up a mountain to a lookout point for the volcano Santa Maria. We’re very excited!

DAY SIX

We woke up when it was not very bright out and was definitely too early. Our bus to get to Santa Maria picked us up at 6 a.m., but there had been some communications issues between Petra (our A Broader View coordinator) and me, so, since I thought we were leaving at 5 a.m., we got at at 4:30. Today has been a very long day.

What can I say about this hike? It was beautiful. The scenery was gorgeous. Our guide, Sandy, who only spoke Spanish, was incredibly sweet and funny. We made record time. I thought I was going to die.

The first hour and a half of the journey up the mountain was entirely uphill, at unbelievably steep inclines. There were rocks, big and small, loose and fixed, everywhere. Apparently a lot of the local indigenous people go up to the volcano almost daily (Sandy didn’t know why), so we were being passed by little old ladies and little old men, moms carrying new born babies, and toddlers who could keep up fairly easily with their parents. I couldn’t breathe. And worse, our guide kept trying to talk to me, and I, being a polite person, keep trying to respond. It was probably some of the best Spanish I’ve ever spoken in my life; because I couldn’t breathe and it took a while for me to get the words out, I had a lot of time to conjugate everything in my head before I spoke.

After two hours, we finally made it to the lookout point. There was a cow there, which was odd, but probably added a little to the aesthetic of being on a rural mountain in Guatemala.

The view was beautiful. Unfortunately, it was soon covered by fog and mist and clouds. And as soon as our view of the volcano was blocked, it erupted. It was a little disappointing to not see any eruption, but we did hear it! That was pretty neat.

Our descent down was worse than up. I almost slipped and broke my ankles and legs and neck dozens of times. My life flashed before my eyes regularly, because if it wasn't a loose stone or an impossible drop-off, it was loose sand or a twisted ankle. But we did make it down intact, and in about an hour! We took some victory pictures at the bottom, like we had at the top, then went home. When we got home, we showered, ate lunch, and went to rest in our rooms, which we really haven’t left since. The place were my legs connects with my hips hurts so bad that I’m having trouble lifting my legs more than an inch or so of the ground. But it’s all good. I’ve taken some Aleve, and tomorrow we’re going to a natural hot springs! I can’t wait!