Adios, Xela

Where to begin...

Thursday:

Visit with classmates to nearby church, San Andres Xecul. An amazing combination of Mayan traditions and Chrisitanity. Rudimentary construction, the facade looks like its made of play-dough. After dinner we watch the documentary: When the Mountains Tremble , a flick about the 1983 civil war in Guatemala as told by Nobel Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu. I had no idea of the atrocities, I highly recommend it.
Friday:

Weaving class at tramatextiles a cooperative of women weavers in the western highlands of Guatemala. It is backbreaking work and after 7 hours I have a scarf, or a cravat rather, since it turned out way too short to be a scarf...
Saturday:

Wake up super early for 5am pickup by Daniel (one of 13 children btw), the hiking guide taking me and some others up to Lago Chicabal. UP the mountain, heart pumping. Past pueblos, farms and hard working people (children included). Potatoes, corn, fava beans, carrots. UP into the rainforest. Hear the call of the elusive Quetzal bird but Daniel is the only one able to spot it...Summit! Look left, erupting volcano Santiaguito. Look right, Lago Chicabal, a lake formed in the crater of an erupted volcano. Down 600 steps to sacred (for Mayan and Christian alike) lake. Walk around, so beautiful. Millions of types of mushrooms. Clouds peak over the lip of the crater and tumble into lake and dissapear in seconds. Head back down mountain, pass group of 6 boys about 7-8 years old all carrying huge bundles of sticks on their heads. First impulse is to feel sorry for, but they are singing and kicking a (makeshift) ball...Walk through quickly moving clouds that nestle IN the mountains, we are up so high. Feels like I can sip the air. Get back to town and I have a lunch that I don't even taste because I am so hungry. Meet up with friends from school and new friends from morning hike. Head to Fuentes Georginas, volcanic hot springs. HOT water, cold air, cold mountain rain. A heavenly sensory overload. The feeling of floating on my back in steamy volcano-heated water with cold rainy-season drops hitting my face will stay with me forever. Head back to town, miraculously find Mediteranean restaurant claimed by two Israeli girls to be "the best falafel they've ever had". Statement accurate...

Sunday:

Last breakfast with my house-mom. Lots of advice about finding a husband (ha!) and life in general. Very sweet. Chicken bus to Antigua.

phew.

Thank goodness Guatemala loves chocolate...

And junk in the trunk

San Andres Xecul

Hola!

Stephanie and me with view of Xela beyond

mountain papas

Active Volcanoe, Santiaguito

Lago Chicabal

Fuentes Georginas volcanic hot springs

Michael Jackson, RIP.

I paid tribute the best way I knew how, by singing ´beat it´in a guatemalan karaoke bar (and if you know me at all...), completely sober.

What a loss. 8 years old, my first concert...

Humpday of my week of intensive spanish school... Mi cabeza esta llenda (gringo translation- my head is full)! I have homework every day. Which I guess I had better get used to. I´m staying with a family here in Xela and that has been quite an interesting experience. The house mother (grandmother actually) is amazing, and coincidentally is a cake maker. We shared photos of wedding cakes we have done. But I´m pretty sure the ´clean-plate-club´originated in Guatemala, so I´ve been full this whole week. And every meal has been served with a glass of Tang. Y'all remember Tang... But really, I shouldn't complain - I am very thankful for the hospitality. Here´s one house recipe I´ll be taking back to the states with me-

Chilaquiles-

Queso Fresco (the crumbly kind)

Fresh corn tortillas, here they're a dime a dozen (really)

Egg beaten with salt and a little bit of flour

Place some Queso Fresco in center of tortilla, fold. Dunk in egg batter. Fry.

Today after class I stumbled into an unreal cemetary where I spent a peaceful moment just before the rain started pouring. Then I headed to salsa class at the school I´m attending. Some of us are going to try out our skills tonight at the local salsa club that apparantly hops on a Wednesday night.

Get this startling little bit of trivia, an average month´s rent for an entire house here is Q1000 which is about $133.

I had my laundry done yesterday and took a shower. I´ll call that the backpacker´s makeover. I miss you and I miss English.

Church in central Xela

buena vista from top floor of school

Quietest place in whole city

and then the rain.

feliz dia de los padres...

Be careful what you ask for lesson #933...

Lonely you say?, well here is someone for you to dine with. He´s a very nice older gentleman but he only wants to talk and talk and talk. Maybe on some other day when I haven´t spent the past three trapped inside my own head. Yes, something is getting lost in translation. No, I will not be your Scarlett Johansson.

Be careful what you ask for lesson #934...

Just when I had it up to here with sitting still, I certainly got my day of movement. I departed the lovely, remote places of San Marcos la Laguna and the inside of my head in a lurching lancha (small boats that cross Lago de atitlan). I am thankful that my backpack and I did not end up in the lake. Once back in Panajachel I caught another chicken bus to Quetzaltenango. Of course it was packed but there was one empty seat left so I snatched it! You know why it was empty, it was the wheel seat.

Be careful what you ask for lesson #935...

As seems to be typical on the chicken buses, the driver turned on the blaring radio which was to be our soundtrack for the 2.5 hour drive. Just as I was cursing the cacophony they turned it off. And gave the floor to a bus-minister...

The chicken buses are an amazing operation. Aside from the major stops, the bus only stops for about 5 seconds. While still in motion, the guy who collects money from the passengers climbs on top to get any luggage the offloading passengers might have, throws it down to them in the 5 second window of stillness and then as the bus starts moving again, he runs (still on top of the bus) to the back of the bus climbs down a ladder and enters through the back door. A well choreographed move. The kid in this instance doing this job was really cute. Had the face of a guatemalan version of Leonardo diCaprio and the hair of an ex-boyfriend of mine whose name I have forgotten. And by the way he was eyeing his favorite female passenger I´d imagine that´s not the only thing the two have in common. Anywho the trip to Xela was a veritable flight, it took us under an hour and a half when I had been told the trip was 2 hours. It´s a good thing I don´t suffer from motion sickness.

Starting tomorrow I will be doing a week of 5hr per day Spanish classes. I´m really excited. Hopefully I will butcher less conversations.

HAPPY FATHER´S DAY DAD! miss you.

last night in San Marcos.

look closely, hummingbird in center. finally caught him.

desayuno typico.inside of a chicken bus...

tranquilo

SAN MARCOS LA LAGUNA, LAGO DE ATITLAN, GUATEMALA
Sitting still is not my strong suit. So my first day in San Marcos la Laguna was challenging. It´s one of the string-of-pearl towns situated around Lago de Atitlan, and is decidely the most chill. Day two I started to get the hang of it and day three (today) I´d say I´ve got it down as well as I ever will. Today: woke up at 6, went for a quick run and then attended yoga at the local meditation center, met some cool hippies (said lovingly) who are participating in the month-long meditation course offered there. Puts my three days of stillness to shame... Then had delicious breakfast at the place where I´m staying: http://www.aaculaax.com/ which is a total steal (I´m paying $12 per night for my own room - everything is handcrafted and mostly recycled - windows made of bits of multicolored bottles, etc). This afternoon I think I´ll get an Indian head massage.
Travelling by yourself puts you in observation mode. Some things I´ve noticed in the past couple of days:

• Beautiful birds. I am basically at the edge of the jungle. I keep trying to take photos of them, but the little buggers don´t stay put long. One type I´ve seen around has a highlighter yellow (of the two highlighter yellows, I mean the old-school version) body and a black top and head. Right by my room is a plant whose flowers must be very sweet as there is a gang of hummingbirds that frequent. One came within about a foot of me.
• An awesome quote. See photo excerpt below from book I´m reading(Bluebeard, Kurt Vonnegut - nice call Juli and Conor). So true, I laughed out loud.
• Stuff is heavy. I was able to offload some things I wasn´t using to a man selling blankets. And a white t-shirt to one of my yoga friends who needed it.
• This is the first time in a long time that I´ve really had time... How long a day feels when you don´t have to do anything. How hard it is to stay up until 10 when it gets dark at 7. Yesterday I had two conversations about the Mayan calendar. The first guy who mentioned it, Juan is an expert in Mayan culture and history and he described it this way: "The calendar we use now is all about 'there is never enough time', in the mayan calendar time is time but time is not time" wha?...I´m excited to learn more about mayan culture when I visit some ruins.
• In the absense of friends, interactions with strangers become really important. I´ve met such nice people.

For anyone who might be interested in a Central American rendevouz, here´s my intended itinerary:

Sunday June 21 - head to Quetzaltenango (aka Xela) for a week of Spanish School

Sunday June 28 - head to Antigua. I plan to take in a lot of the surrounding sites based there. Sometime during that week I plan to head to Copan (ruins actually in Honduras).

Sunday July 5 - head to El Salvador to learn to surf!!! http://www.surfeldorado.com/

that´s about all I got planned for now.

Date not set - head to Nicaragua

Date not set - head to Costa Rica
August 4 - Meet Nic in Costa Rica
Augus 14 - end of trip, fly out of San Jose.
ciao!
-fi

PANAJACHEL, LAGO DE ATITLAN, GUATEMALA

Upon arriving in Panajachel after a red-eye flight that ended a really hectic (equal parts fun and stress) last week in Seattle, I got to my perfect little hotel room and crashed without even venturing out for dinner. Woke up 12 hours later, ready for the day. I walked into town to the ´parada de buses´to catch a ´chicken-bus´, former US schoolbuses repurposed, repainted and renamed. In this case, ´Maria Luisa´. The operators stand outside the bus hollering the destination city´s nickname...´Paná!´´Solá!´until it fills up with passengers. On a row that would fit 2 US school children, there were typically 3 or 4 people. And there were people in the aisles. Once all aboard, the bus hurtled up the winding mountain roads to Solola to drop us off at the spectacular tuesday Mercado. Wow, Bustle. Anything and everything can be purchased here; produce, live baby chickens, used dolls, pvc pipe, gizzards-livers blend by the kilo, watch batteries, egg-fried green beans (yum), spices, etc.

Sololá is a very traditional Guatemalan town with a strong Mayan cultural influence, most obviously observed in the traditional, colorful, striped woven clothes of almost everyone at the market. Outfit complete with bundle on head for women and light straw colored cowboy-style hat for the men. I stood out for many obvious reasons. I´ve never felt so tall in my life, on average most people were about a foot to a foot and a half shorter than me. I believe it might have been the tiniest woman in the world that tried to sell me a handmade doll.

It was a sunny morning at the market and as things started to close down around 2.00, the rain clouds started to roll in, as they do everyday this time of year during the rainy season. It happens almost instantly, the day splits in two. Thanks to gravity, the chicken bus trip down the mountain was even more thrilling than the ride up (in that roller-coaster sort of way).

I filled the afternoon with a walk to the old part of Panajachel and checked out the beautiful old church. On the walk back I was drawn (by forces beyond my control) into a chocolate shop and purchased a bar of handmade dark guatemalan chocolate with chile. While I was in there a sweet old hippy man offered me a taste of his cardamom chocolate combo. His won. I ventured out for dinner at a restaurant a few steps from my hotel with outdoor seating with a view of the entire lake. Dinner brought new meaning to the term ´party of one´as I was the only patron in the place. I guess because it´s low season for tourists and it was a litte off the beaten path? It certainly wasn´t for anything lacking in the food. After a couple of weeks of not really having an apetite (see aforementioned stress) my tastebuds suddenly turned back on. I celebrated their return with a piping hot bowl of caldo pescado (head included) and arroz con frijoles y tortillas. ¡Que rico! While paying my bill I realized I hadn´t spoken in English all day...

Ideas and Actions:

Some ideas are just ideas, some are influences. And some inevitably become actions. The past month I've felt at the mercy of the latter category, as I hung on for dear life while ideas I put into motion a long time ago accelarated into actions. Turns out stopping your life (work, seattle) and changing course (grad school, new york) entails a lot of details. But I think I got them all sorted.

While I am excited for the changes...I'm gonna miss the heck out of Seattle. I have made the most amazing friends there, it's humbling.

Here is my ultimate memories playlist for Seattle:

Wordless Chorus - My Morning Jacket...in my opinion, a song that should be on every playlist ever. It just sounds like happiness to me.

Cash it in - Zero Seven...summer ´06 road trip to la push, one of the most amazing places on earth. If you haven´t been yet, do yourself a favor.

Ghostwriter - RJD2...manzanita!

Kiss my Name - Antony and the Johnsons...saw him perform at the moore, it moved me.

My Girls - Animal Collective...loudest set at sasquatch. Totally worth the ringing.

Everybody Got their Something - Nikka Costa...because everybody does, ya know? Went to her show at Chop Suey, developed a total girl crush.

My Humps - Black Eyed Peas...bear with me, I know this song it cheesy. Somehow it became the theme song to my trip to india with Sony, Corbett and Abby. It started somewhere with a cow´s hump. Plus, this is always on my running play list.

The Ghost of you Lingers - Spoon...bringing a little austin to your seattle. Another one that reminds me of summer ´06, bumbershoot.

The Wizard Turns On - Flaming Lips...sasquatch ´07? During the set I turned to Sony to tell her that he really reminded me of Ellen Degeneres. Oh sasquatch.

Pleasure and Pain - Ben Harper...got in free to this show by waiting outside long after being told there were no tickets. Guy took pity on me and escorted me in. My heart was broken at the time and this song brought everything full circle.

Heavenly Day - Patty Griffin...love this song, makes me think of Jolene and Ryan´s reception.

What it Look like - Spank Rock...lots of good dancing memories to spankrock. He´s so vulgar on stage, but when we introduced ourselves after the show he was all shy.

Apache - Incredible Bongo Band...came upon this after listening to npr clip about the origins of rap.

Lex - Ratatat...makes me think of a lot of things. Inluding their show at Neumos where their afros were absolutely wonderful.

Letter from God to Man - Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip...Coachella ´08. Randomly stopped into their show on way to another, one of my faves.

2002 - Bob Schneider...Another dose of Austin.

New York I love you - LCD Soundsystem...apt lyrics for me right now.

Miss you already.