Unfortunately, a couple weeks’ ago events did not included much of the Futbol Sin Fronteras girls because the fields were flooded because of the amount of rain we had. It rained for it seemed like two days straight, which is never any fun. A few of the girls came to the office instead of practice on Monday, so we had some fun for a couple hours. Laura and Claudia are always trying to rack in the points and come to every possible thing that they can. I can’t remember if I have explained the points system in here or not, if so I apologize. Every practice the girls come to they get a point, and if they bring homework and actually do it during homework hour they receive another point (most of the time they just play games, or try and fake do their homework). Every 5 points they receive a bon bon, a watermelon flavored sucker that they love. At 10 points they can choose to get shinguards, shorts, shirts, backpacks, ect. At 20 points they get tacos (cleats), which they generally get very excited about. We give them 3 or 4 pairs to chose from, and they usually bring their closest friends in the office to help them pick the “coolest” ones. Our most dedicated, and one of my favorites (if that’s allowed!), has close to 70 points! We have other girls that come regularly, that are following in her footsteps. For our office activity on Wednesday, we celebrated one of the girls, Rosa, birthday. We all made cards for her and gave them to her. I'm not sure my card made sense in Spanish, but i tried. We made them popcorn to eat while they made the cards, which they love. They LOVE when we put seasoned salt on the popcorn, and are constantly asking for more! After the cards we taught them how to play twister on a home made twister board that we taped colored squares of paper on the floor. Most of them didn't really understand the concept of not being able to move after you place your hand or foot somewhere, but it still was fun for them.
Pupas took us for a hike on Thursday, which was a lot of fun. It was so beautiful, and we could see a lot of the different cities around the lake when we were up high. We also went through some land that the people farm on. It's amazing to me that they can farm on land that is so steep, and do everything their selves, and then walk it down. A little different then the huge machinery they use to farm in the states.
The weekend definitely was an adventure though. Because of the rain, boulders have been falling on the road to Pana so it is closed periodically. There is one spot on the drive down that it happens and it seems like it takes them a week to git rid of one boulder. They work on it all day with a jack hammer (I think) and break it into a bunch of little pieces. I feel like there has to be a more efficient way, but hey its Guatemala. Needless to say the road to Pana is not necessarily safe not during rainy season, but during it’s even worst. I have learned here that when you drive a bus you are supposed to accelerate on turns, and it is normal for a bus to pass a car (on a curve). So, like every other weekend, we went to Pana on Saturday night to go out. It was one of our friends birthday, so it was fun. We were supposed to go to a churasco (bbq) during the day for his birthday, but we ended up going up to this spot that had a really good view of the lake. We were with a couple of Pupas’ friends there and one of the girls was from Canada. She had bleach blond hair and definitely didn’t look like she belonged here, but I guess her family has lived here a little while. She invited us over to her families house to watch a movie before we went out. It was actually like a real house inside, with a couch and big tv, so it was kind of nice to be there. The best part of the day was her family having peanut butter, and getting to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (yes, I’m a fat kid)! You can’t find peanut butter in Solola, and its probably really expensive in Pana. So after the movie and more importantly, the peanut butter and jelly, Steph and I headed to the hostel to take a little nap before we went out to the bars. Everything was good until we woke up the next morning.
It was Sunday morning, which means we had the Copa Mundial Femenina in the gym at 9. We woke up at 7:45 to be sure we made it back to Solola with plenty of time. We were sitting on the curb waiting for the bus, and after 10 or so many we began to wonder where it was. A man walked over to us and was to speaking to us in Spanish, but we caught that he was telling us that the road was closed. We tried to stay clam, and walked over to wear the road was closed and there were the police. We noticed there was 2 pick-up trucks with a million people crammed in the back. It turned out they were letting one truck at a time go up, so we got lucky and got on the second truck. At this point I was relieved, thinking we got lucky, until the truck stopped like a mile up and made us get out. This was the point of the road where the boulder had fallen, so everyone got up and started walking to San Jorge to catch the next bus. Steph and I had to run there, because we were running out of time. But we made it and caught a bus back up to Solola, and made it to the gym right on time. According to Guatemalan time we were early, because the teams don’t start showing up until 9:15 haha. The games went well, with all the teams showing up except one that had everyone show up eventually, but according to our rules they had to forfeit. They still got to play, so that’s really what matters to us. Again, all the games were fairly close and it seemed as if the girls were really enjoying their selves. One of our FSF teams got their first win, so we were all pretty stoked about that.
Last Monday was our first day working at UVG in the morning during the week. UVG is a private school, a short bus-ride away from Solola. It is close to Santa Maria, so our girls from there and other places near by come to the practices there. Generally the public schools here have the younger kids from 7:30-12:30 and the older kids in the afternoon. Therefore it is hard to have practices with the older girls during the week, but we finally got it so we could do it in the morning. At UVG I think they have more of a normal schedule, and they actually practice with us during their physical education time. Monday was the first day back from a two week vacation for the UVG kids, so they had some ceremony during the time of practice. So, we only ended up having 5 Santa Maria girls. It actually turned out really well, because we got to work more individually with them, and work on more technical things. They are a group of girls that always come to practice, and are so energetic and thankful. When we got back, we had the younger girls in the afternoon. We have practice at Xamba, which is a big field on Mondays, so we have more space to work with. It was a good session and of course they never leave right after, so some of the girls were trying to work out with me.
Tuesday, Steph and I started at a Spanish School in Pana. Our first day went by very quickly and we learned a lot. After class we had to get back to the Solola for the office activity. We showed them a powerpoint of the countries’ flags, the national anthem of each country, each countries’ typical food, where the countries are located on a map, how to say hello in each country. At the end we showed them a video of the top 5 goals of the last women’s world cup, because most of them have never seen a woman play professional soccer. All the girls were very involved and interested in the powerpoint and especially liked to see the typical food of each country. The funniest part of the workshop was teaching the girls how to say hello in different languages. Our personal favorite was teaching the girls how they would say hello in England. The British accent is key when saying hello and we got a good laugh hearing them trying to speak with a British accent. The girls know some simple English phrases from school, so it’s funny hearing them say them. My favorite that they say is, ‘Oh My God’. After we got done with the powerpoint, of course the girls didn’t want to leave so we let them watch Alvin and the Chipmunks 2 on my computer. You can buy dvd’s in the market for 5 or 10Q (around $1), that have multiple movies on them. One that we bought randomly had Alvin and the Chipmunks in Spanish. Needless to say the girls loved it, but we had to cut the movie short and get them out of the office at some point.
We had practice again on Wednesday, but it’s at Casa Deportista, which is basically like a sand box. There is a huge puddle at one end of the “field” so that gives us about a 15 by 10 area to work with. We had a new girl show up to practice that was so cute! She claims she is 8 years old but looks like she is 5. She actually was pretty good, and it seemed as if she had a lot of fun, so hopefully she will come back to practice on Monday.
Thursday was a very eventful day for us, starting with practice at UVG. This time, the UVG girls all showed up, which included almost 30 of them. We definitely did not expect that many, but we made it work. They did some running drills that we made into a competition at the beginning. At the end we had two fields set up for 7 v 7, and they got to play for 30 minutes or so. It was a lot different having that many girls at a practice, but now that we know there will always be that many, we can plan out more concrete practices. After practice, Steph and I headed to Pana and layed by the lake for a while, before we began our trek from Pana to Solola. I’m not sure why we thought it would be a good idea to walk 8 kilometers up a mountain, but hey now we can say we did it. Of course, about 20 minutes into our hike it starts pouring and the temperature drops. We kept going up the hills and curves, and all I could think was ‘I hope I don’t get hit by a car’. There is no shoulder or anything and the road is fairly narrow so we had to be careful, but luckily most the cars are loud going up a hill so we could hear them coming. After one of the hills I wanted to quit and sit down in the middle of the road, but I’m not a quitter haha. As we got higher, the view got more and more breath taking. Without the beauty of the scenery, I probably never would have done that. Anyways, we made it and can now say we walked from Solola to Pana. Now before we leave we have to walk down, which I will be more than happy to do after going up.
After class on Friday, we went to the lake and layed out for a couple of hours. There was no one out where we were and the water was really rough, but it was very relaxing. Hearing the waves hit the rocks kind of made me feel like I was at an ocean haha. We both got a little burnt, and it is official that Steph does not know how to put sunscreen on properly. She has white blotches all over her body! We came back to Solola for a couple hours before we headed back down to Pana to party.
Time has been flying by lately, and before we know it we will be leaving. I have made many memories in the last couple of weeks, and look forward to 5 more weeks of Guatemalan livin’.
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