Sunday, June 26, 2011

It's been awhile

My apologies for not posting in here in so long!  It’s almost been two weeks of Steph and I living on our own, without the other two interns.  It was really sad to see them go, even though we had only known them two weeks.  They helped us so much the first two weeks, I seriously don’t know what we would have done if they weren’t here.  Along with the interns we got to meet, there were two others that were here for 9 months (mas o menos).  The four of them took this program so far and accomplished so much in the time that they spent here!
The day Julie and Ava left, we woke up at 5:45 to say our good-byes, and then later in the day we had our first office activity without any Spanish help.  It actually went a lot better than I thought, and the girls seemed to enjoy it.  We played a game that Ava actually made before she left, that was similar to BINGO.  Instead of calling out numbers or letters, each square had a question and they had to find someone in the room that was the answer.  After that we played musical chairs, of course to the sound of Justin Bieber.  All the little girls love him, especially Veronica!  It has gotten a lot easier to communicate with the girls, as my Spanish has improved.  The girls speak fairly simply and slower than the adults here, so it is good practice.  Another bonus is they don’t care if you mess up or don’t know what to say, they’ll even correct us.  
After practice the next day, we packed our bags really quickly and headed to Antigua.  I think we had to take 3 buses and 2 and a half hours to get there.  The first bus we caught out of Solola was the most crowded bus I’ve ever been on.  We were crammed in through the back door, and with a boot it’s not so easy.  Once we got to Santa Maria (I think) we had to get off and catch another bus, which wasn’t as crowded.  That took us to some other city that was crowded and fast paced, but we hopped off and found the next bus.  This was the last bus ride, but seriously felt like I was on a roller coaster.  Anyway, we made it and immediately walked to meet one of Luis’ friend to get something to eat.  After that we went to find a hostel, which turned out to be the nastiest place I’ve ever stayed.   After the bars closed we were hungry so we got some street food and sat and ate it.  While we were sitting there I watched a police officer knock on a little window on a door and then grab a bag of white stuff.  I’m pretty sure I watched a cop buy cocaine at 2 in the morning.  Oh well, we still had a good night out in Antigua.  The next day we toured around the city for a while.  The architecture is very unique and beautiful.  It was a very touristy place, so it was different to see a lot of white people.  But we had to get back for practice Saturday morning.
We went to Pana Saturday night to watch Guatemala play Mexico in the Gold Cup.  We watched the first half at Pupas’ house then went to the bars to watch the rest.  They were actually up 1-0 at half, but couldn’t hold them off, similar to the U.S.  in the finals.  After the game we went to different bars, and met some boys our age from Guatemala City.  They spoke almost perfect English, and didn’t look Guatemalan at all, but they were haha.  We hung out with them most of the night, and and had a really good time minus the fact that Steph left her rain jacket at the restaurant we ate at.  So, now she doesn’t have a rain jacket during rainy season. 
Sunday we decided to finally take inventory of all the donated gear and clean up the office.  We got Luis and his friend to help us write the sizes on the back of the newly donated cleats, while we counted and organized the old ones.  The office looks a lot better now that it’s clean and doesn’t have random donated gear everywhere!
Last week was a busy week for us, because we had to get all of our last minute things together for the Copa Mundial Femenina (Women’s World Cup) that we are having.  We went around to some of the schools with Julie and Ava to give the information to, and then the rest with Luis.  When we went back to pick up the registration forms, not one of the schools had them ready.  They all said come back Wednesday, so we did and if I remember correctly NONE of them had it ready!  We spent like an hour and a half at Intergral, waiting for the gym teacher to come then find all the girls to write their names down!  The Director at that school is extremely nice though, and was very excited about what we are doing.  Thursday morning I was laying out on the roof, reading, and a coach came and had the registration sheet for her school.  Another coach showed up at 5 with the forms, but couldn’t stay for the coaches meeting at 6, so we had to give him his country and uniforms.  By the way, with this event we are doing, we are giving each school a set of uniforms that they get to keep even after the tournament is over.  The other coaches ended up showing up to the meeting Thursday night, and we passed out all the uniforms and clarified some things.
The big opening ceremonies were set for Friday at 4, but that didn’t happen as planned.  We were able to use a projector from the city I think, and then a guy was supposed to come to set up the sound and everything.  The first thing that went wrong was that we didn’t have an extension chord for the projector, which wasn’t the worst thing.  Then I realized the chord to plug the computer into the projector would not work with a mac.  Luis tried to turn the projector on, and it wouldn’t even work, so all the time we spent on the power point and everything was wasted.  Luckily Luis’ father came up with his computer and we at least got the sound to work, so we could play each countries national anthem as they walked around the gym.  Only four teams showed up for the ceremony, which was pretty much expected.   For the teams and girls that did come, we had a really good time.  After the introductions and stuff, we did some relay races.  And then at the end each team had 5 minutes to come up with a cheer for their country then do it in middle of the court.  For the circumstances, I think it went well, although it’s kind of a bummer that a lot of the work we all put in for it was wasted.
After the Ceremony we took everything back to the office, packed out bags, and headed to San Pedro.  We took a bus to Pana, then had to take about a 30 minute boat ride over to San Pedro.  Once we got off the boat and dropped out stuff at the hostel we ate Pupusas at this little stand that a lady cooks at night.  Pupusas is similar to a quesadilla(a lot different than a quesadilla in the states), a tortilla stuffed with cheese, beans, and pork.   They were really delicious, but I had to finish off my meal with my first candy bar since I’ve been here.  I saw a snickers at a tienda and couldn’t resist!  After we ate we went to a bar with live music, and I met some students from NC State that were on a study abroad program.  It was cool to talk to them and hear what they were doing and tell them what I am doing here.  The next morning, Steph and I explored the town a bit before Luis woke up, then we all went to breakfast.   It was a really cool place, with a really good view of the lake and volcano!  After that we went kayaking, which was so fun and beautiful.  It was kind of a bummer for Luis, because when he was trying to get out of the kayak he fell in and had his phone and camera in his pocket.  So that was a pretty expensive kayaking experience for him.  After we got changed and everything we headed back to Solola, because we had plans to watch the U.S. game with a family here.  We went over around 7 and watched the game in one of the bedrooms that had a tv with cable.  They were all actually cheering for the U.S. because a lot of people here hate Mexico.  While we were watching, one of the girls was cooking steak on a grill type thing.  Steak here is a thin piece of very tough beef, and you basically just use your hands and teeth to rip it apart to eat.  Along with the carne we had a salad with cucumbers, avocado, tomatoes, and who knows what else, but everything was very good.
This morning was our first day of Copa Mundial games, which started at 9.  The first game didn’t end up starting until 9:30, which was pretty much on time for Guatemalans.  It’s so different coming from America where you are almost expected to be early everywhere, to here where NOTHING starts on time.  Everyone is very relaxed and kind of on their own time here.  All the teams showed up, and we fit all 4 games in the time slot we had for the gym.  Thank you to Lindsay Basalyga and EKU, one of the teams was wearing the uniforms that I wore at Eastern my sophomore year, so they definitely looked good.  Well the Futbol Sin Fronteras team looked pretty good too with their FSF jerseys.  Overall, it was a very successful day and all of the work we put into making it happen was worth it after seeing the smiles on the girls faces while playing.  There are still three more weeks of the tournament, and I am so excited to see what will happen!
I’ve made a note to myself, not to wait this long to post because that took way too long to write and I’m sure I missed a million things!  But I will work on posting pictures (for you Grandma, since you can’t figure out facebook)! 
Much love to all!

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Mi tobillo duele


I will start off with the bad parts of this past week, which include bug bites and a bad ankle.  I have mass amounts bug bites all over my body, and the itch terribly.  I’m trying so hard not to itch them because I don’t want them to scar but its tough.  New bites keep popping up, but I have never seen a bug on me, it’s strange.  We thought it might be bed bugs, but we checked the beds and looked up symptoms, and none of mine matched.  Well, my ankle isn’t getting much better; it actually may be getting worse.  It is bruised from my toes all the way up my calve, I’ll try and post a picture sometime.  I am going to get an x-ray today, so we’ll see what happens.  I’m pretty sure it’s just a bad ankle sprain.  That’s about all the bad that has happened; don’t want to worry my parents too much :)
There has been way more GOOD than BAD this past week!  On Wednesday we made maracas and necklaces out of pasta with the girls for our office activity.  The maracas turned into a sword fight with the bottles, but the girls seemed to enjoy it.   We got colorful pasta from the market to use for the necklaces, and it turned out well.  When we were done  one of the girls asked to take some pasta home to cook, so we got together a little baggy full.  We gave it to her little sister who was there, and it was moving to see her eyes light up when she received it.  The two sisters come to every practice and activity, and are the sweetest kids ever.  All together their family has 9 kids, so that is 11 people to feed every day.  Seeing what all of these kids have definitely makes me appreciate more of what I had when I was growing up and have now.
On Thursday we went to the dispensa and made a meal together.  We got a rotisere chicken and chips, and then got avacados for guacamole and tortillas.  We made rice and mashed potatoes to go along with everything.   It was amazing, but we all ate so much that we felt sick!  After dinner we played cards, and just had a good time.  Fridays practice went well, and then it was time to go out in Pana for the first time.  When we were wanting to leave it was pouring down rain, but we had to hurry and go to catch the last camionetta.  It’s not smart to walk up hill a flooded street with flip flops on with a messed up ankle, but hey I made it.  It was probably the scariest bus ride I’ve ever been on.  It was raining so hard and the streets were flooding, and we were driving down a mountain.  I guess a little before we left they had the road blocked because rocks were sliding down into the street.  Julie and I were sitting in the back row with I think 5 other people, and you couldn’t see out the windows.  To top everything off it sounded like the tire underneath us was going to fall off.  Once we made it down we went and got a room at the hostel for the night.  It is only 35 Q a person, which is less than 5 dollars.  We went to a couple of different bars and met a lot of Ava and Julies friends, so it was a really good time.  Ava and I had a fun time dancing by ourselves at one bar as well.  We woke up early Saturday to go to practice in Santa Maria.
It was a beautiful day, and we had a good turn out of girls.  All the girls didn’t show up until after 10:30 even though practice is supposed to start at 10, but that’s Guatemala.  I led the warm up and had them do relays, which were fun for them.  After practice we ended up getting a ride back to Solola in the back of a truck so we didn’t have to wait or pay for the camionetta(bus).  We all got a lot of sun and were tired so we came back to the office and rested for a little while before we headed back to Pana to have a Churasco(barbeque) for Julie and Ava leaving.  Ava, Pupas, and his mom made a bunch of delicious food, and then the boys cooked meat on the grill once we got there.  Rojo, one of their friends let us have the Churasco at his house, which was really big and nice.  After that we all headed to the bars and had a good time.  After the bars closed and we were on the way to the hostel, we passed a bunch of people with sheets over their heads and baseball bats.  Thankfully there were a bunch of police, or else we would have been scared.  Overall it was a really enjoyable night.
Sunday morning we woke up early again to come back to Solola to get ready for Ava and Julies despadida (going away party) with all the girls.  We played a bunch of games and then they all made them cards.  After our time in the gym was up, they asked if our girls wanted to play in a game against a team that is made up of girls apart of an extracircular program from the government (I think).  Our girls got to put on jerseys and they looked so cute!  They were so excited, and kept looking up to us to make sure we were watching.  Then ended up losing 5-0, but they did really well considering the other girls were much bigger than them.  It was a great way to end the despadida!  We were invited to another families house for dinner.  The family was extremelt nice and made a really good dinner.  It was like a bunch of vegetables and chicken in a pot and they served  it with mashed pototatoes.  We sat and talked for a while and one of the women was studying to be a nurse so she was very concerned about my ankle.  She kept oferring to give me a shot for the pain and inflammation, but we had no idea what it was, so vetoed that idea.  After dinner and visiting with the family we came back and watched a couple of movies.
 View out the back of the office
Yesterday, I finally went to the doctor for my ankle.  Luis and I first went to the hospital to get an x-ray.  The emergency room barely had anyone in it, and it took forever to get any attention.  It was really dirty, and totally different than a hospital in the States.  The nurses were eating and talking on their cell phones, but finally a doctor came in that Luis happened to know so he wrote us an order to get the x-ray.  We got the x-ray and then it was off to practice.  We had a good turnout and a fun practice.  Rosa, one of the little girls, scored some sweet goals during the chamusca!  After practice I went and saw the doctor to actually look at my ankle.  We made an appointment for 3:30 but naturally the doctor was late, so we didn’t get to see him until 4:30.  Right when I walked in he blew his nose and then shook my hand, that’s sanitary right?  But he was extremely nice, and concerned about my ankle.  I could not understand a word he was saying in Spanish, because he was talking so fast.  Luis translated most of what he said to me, but it was kind of frustrating not knowing what the heck he was saying.  At one point he said it was broken, but then he said it’s not.  So I really have no clue what is going on.  He gave me an option of getting a cast, or a boot.  I refuse to have a cast and be on crutches here so I chose the boot, the only problem is I would have to go to the city, which is 3 hours away to get one.  He made a phone call and luckily someone he knows has one that will let me borrow it.  Luis is going to pick it up today, so hopefully in no time i’ll be back to playing!  

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

The Hike


            My first Saturday night went well.  We ended up watching Amores Perro, which translates to Love’s a bitch.  It was in Spanish so the subtitles kept me awake the whole time, but it was a very interesting movie.  It had about 3 different plots, and none of them really went together.  The first plot had a lot to do with betting on dog fights, so I was convinced I was going to have nightmares.  As we were walking back we turned around and there was a pack of 6 dogs.  I think I mentioned in my first post, but there are stray dogs everywhere.  At night they all come out and eat the trash and food laying on the ground from the market.  I’m not scared of walking alone at night because of people, I’m more scared of the dogs.
            Sunday was probably my favorite day so far.  We had two practices in the morning in the gym, which were fun.  After practice we played a 5 v 5 basketball game with some kids that were in the gym.  Then the day got interesting…
            Majo, one of the girls we coach, invited us to go on a hike with her and her brother.  We went over to her house to meet her and her Mom was cooking lunch and invited us in.  She was making meat tortillas, which is ground up beef with vegetables mixed in.  You flatten the meet and put it in a pan with a bunch of oil and butter.  Julie and I got to help her but ours didn’t work out as well as hers.  While we were cooking, Majo went to the market and got fresh tortillas and orange juice for our meal.  We all sat down in one of the rooms to eat with the family, and it was amazing!  The tortillas here are so different than in America, and so much better.  The family lives in a very, very small house with two bedrooms, and five people.  It  was so amazing to me that a family could be so happy living that way. 

I found this ball that some of the little kids were playing with that we ran in to!

            Anyways, once we were done with lunch it was time to go on our hike to see beautiful scenery (and get lost and the woods).  We walked from the office up through a lot of different areas, including a strange abandoned house and an agricultural school.  We were being led by Majo’s cousin and his friends, so they knew all the cool places to stop.  The agricultural school or whatever it was had a barn full of bunnies in cages, but I’m not really sure what they do with them.  They also had a boar and this massive pig, which might be considered a boar.  Once we were there we were about at the highest elevation we would be at on the hike so we went a little ways and entered the forest.  It started out fine, and we came to the first mirador, or look out and it was beautiful.  I posted some pictures on facebook and if I can figure out to put them on here I will.  We kept going until we got to Mirador #2 and it was equally or more beautiful than the first.  The boys acted like they knew where they were going so we followed them and ended up deep into the woods not knowing how to get out.  We went through some crazy terrain and ended up by this waterfall, which was pretty dope but Steph slid down into Julie that had potential to be bad.  After 3 and a half hours we made our way out, and got back to the office.  It felt like it was midnight by the time we were back, we were so exhausted from the day.
            Monday we have homework hour for the girls at 1:30 when they get out of school, but it was raining so only 3 girls showed up.  Practice is supposed to be at 2:30 but the field closed because of the rain, so we just played games with the girls in the office.  We gave them trashbags to cover themselves on their way home, because it was raining really hard.  The two sisters had a pretty far walk too, so I felt bad.  At 5 we got on the bus and headed down to Pana to chamusca (scrimmage).  It was an excited adventure down the mountain, and the buses drive crazy.  Once we got there we had to walk fast to get to the field because we were late.  The field was about the size of a tennis court, fenced in and had a cover over the top.  It was the perfect size to play 5 v 5, and so fast pace because the only time the play stops is when it hits the fence behind the goal.  There were 3 teams, so once one team scored the losing team went off.  I played for about an hour, and then I went in for a tackle with the goalie and landed on my ankle wrong.  I have only rolled my ankle once and it wasn’t very bad, but this hurt worse than anything!  I was lying on the ground and some guy was like trying to move my ankle and I was yelling at him, but I proceeded to get up and go on the side.  Ava, being the nice person she is, went and got me ice to put on it.  So I sat out the last 45 minutes or so then we had to walk back to catch a ride back to Solola, but first we stopped to get an empanada.  We saw a bunch of guys we played with at the place so sat with them for a while, therefore we missed the bus.  We had to take a pickup truck back up the mountain, and it was pouring down rain.  They stuffed about 10 people in the back of a tiny, old truck and put a tarp over us.  It was not the most fun ride with my ankle, but needless to say we made it. 
            I woke up yesterday morning and could barely walk, and my ankle was huge, but once I got going it was fine.  We took a bus then had to walk 15 minutes to a families house in Santa Maria.  It was very interesting to see how different the people in this village lived.  They had a mud floor, most of them were barefoot, and cooked on a fire.  The women made us soup with noodles (similar to ramen noodles) and then tortillas.  One of the women, delivered a baby at noon yesterday, so we got to see a new born.  She had the baby in the bed she was laying in when we saw her.  You put the noodles in the tortillas, and eat it.   Actually you put everything here in tortillas and eat it.  For dinner, Luis’ family invited us over.  His mother made us tostadas, one was with guacamole and the other was with meet and veggies.  For desert she made plantains in this special chocolate sauce.  Everything was delicious, the food here is really good.  That’s about all I got for now, much love! 

Saturday, June 4, 2011

The Beginning..


After all of the anticipation, I am finally here!  Getting here went very smoothly and was actually enjoyable.  I landed in Dallas and I swear it took 20 minutes to get to the gate, and another 20 to get off the plane.  Once I got in the airport it was time to meet the girl that I will be living with for the next 2 and a half months.  I sat down at the gate and she came up to me, and that’s that.  We met some pretty cool people that were also going to Guatemala, while we were waiting for the flight.  Then before I knew it we were landing in Guatemala City!
Once we got our bags and went through customs it was out the door to meet Luis.  He was there with his brother, who lives in the city, so he had a car.  Guatemala city was sort of similar to any big city in the U.S. which was surprising to me.  There were two-story McDonalds everywhere, and even Taco Bell (who would have thought)!  There were police everywhere, and they have huge guns, they almost look like our military. We ended up staying at his brothers place, and he made us sandwiches.  Luis decides to warn us that there might be a strike tomorrow morning, which means the roads will be blocked and riots.   Luckily that did not happen and we got picked up around 11 to head to Sololá. 
The drive was incredible to say the least.  Solola is at a higher elevation, so we were driving up through curvey roads, with beautiful landscape.  There were horses and cows tied up on the sides of the road, and women walking around with things on their head.  We arrived around 2:30, and were greeted by the two interns, Mary, and the kids that were in the office.  The kids have homework hour in the office at 2 on Thursdays, then it’s off to the field for practice at 3.  So, we walked a couple of blocks and entered a fenced in area, and there was the field.  Well, the field was about a 20 by 10 box of dirt, but it didn’t matter.  The kids were anywhere from 5 to 12 years old, and were so fun to work with.  It was so cool to see the smiles on their faces, and how much they enjoyed the practice.  About half of the girls wear their traditional Mayan dress, and the other half wears normal clothing.  Some of the girls have cleats, which they earned through futbol sin fronteras (soccer without borders).  There is a point system and once they get enough points they get cleats to wear.  After practice one of the girls had earned enough points to get a pair, so she brought some of her close friends back to the office to help her pick out the cleats.  It was awesome to see how excited the girls got after receiving a pair of used cleats!
Once we got all the kids out, Steph and I kind of got settled in and talked to the other interns for a while before dinner.  We went out to a restaurant with Mary (the executive director who is visiting) and Luis.  It was very nice and had great food, but we had to get ice cream after!  Once we got back to the office we were pretty worn out, and that was the end of my first day in Solola!
The next day we slept in a bit, because we didn’t have practice until 4:30.  Once we were up we went to the dispensa (similar to a grocery store), to get some food for the office.  We also walked through the market, which is crazy on Fridays.  It’s hard to explain but there is fruit, vegetables, and random stuff that you can buy.  They also have a bunch of dried up fish that they sell and it smells terrible.  I can’t imagine what dried up minnows taste like, but it can’t be good.  There are also people making tortillas everywhere and they are amazing!  Everything is extremely cheap here it’s kind of crazy.  We had practice at the stadium field in the afternoon, but only like 4 girls showed up, because it started to rain around the time it started.  For some reason when it rains here people think they are going to melt, which is weird because it rains everyday.  But practice was fun, we just played 5 v 5 with the girls. 
Today, we had practice in Santa Maria so we had to leave here at 9:30 to take the chicken bus (cost 35 cents) to the field.  There is actually a University type school there, which is where we hold the practice.  This practice is for older girls, and was a lot of fun.  We bring a bag of gear including cleats, shorts, and shirts for the girls to wear because most of them come in their Mayan dress.  By the time everyone showed up and got changed we only had about an hour to practice.  We first did some agility work, and me and Julie were on a team, so it was fun.  Then we played a game where you have to hit a ball off a cone, which they liked.  Lastly, we scrimmaged, and it was so much fun.  We played with them and it is so cool how their eyes light up and how excited they get when they are playing!  After practice two of the girls came up and asked for help with their English homework.  So, Julie and Ava helped them translate a story from English to Spanish, then we had to catch the bus back to Sololá.  We were supposed to have another practice at 1:30 in the gym, but when we got there it was already being used by a weight lifting competition.  It was young kids competing and was kind of funny to watch.  It rained for about 5 hours, but stopped recently so Steph and I are going over to Luis’ to watch a movie.  Ava and Julie went to Pana with Mary, because she is leaving tomorrow and catching a shuttle to the airport from there.  Pana is a town on the lake that has restaurants and bars and is only 15 minutes away.  Sololá doesn’t have much of a night life, but once the sun comes up the people are ready to go.  Well there ya go, my first post since being in Guatemala.  I hope you enjoy, and keep reading!