It finally hit me that I will be back in the States at this time next week. I feel like I just got here, and I shouldn’t be leaving already. I have become really close to some people here, and it’s going to be hard to leave. This has been one of the most amazing experiences of my life, and something I will never forget! Well, enough of the sappiness…
The past couple weeks has been one of the most incredible and adventurous weeks. It is so rewarding to see how much the girls have improved in their soccer abilities. They can now pass the ball correctly and actually understand the concept of the game better. Now when they come to the office they even ask for a soccer ball so they can practice juggling with their thighs! Lately they also love playing cabeza, mano (head it, catch it) in the office. I don’t think Veronica ever messes up and Wendy has definitely caught on. Wendy is so little that when she heads it, the ball almost knocks her over!
Solola has transformed into a totally different city the past couple of weeks. La Feria (the fair) is a huge event that takes place in the city every August for about two weeks. Our street is now filled with booths of corny games and food. There are probably 6 Churro stands within two blocks and 4 different pizza stands. They have a bunch of fusbol tables and video games, along with really corny homemade games. There is also a block that is filled with probably 10 different booths of these people selling the same exact cookies. Well, I don’t really know if you’d call them a cookie or a cracker or what, but they are definitely a big hit here. They are pretty good, but I’m not quite sure what the big deal is with them, I guess just the time of the year. They recently brought in a ferris wheel, which they call la rueda de Chicago, and other carnival rides (if you can even call them that). It reminds me of a carnival from the 1980’s or something, they are a little behind the times!
Last Wednesday we get a knock on the door at 8:30, and sure enough it was two of our girls Laura and Claudia (cousins). Even though they had already spent probably two hours in the office earlier in the day, they hadn’t had enough. One of them had their 3 and 5 year old siblings with them. I don’t know how I’d feel about my 10 year old roaming the street with my 3 and 5 year old in the dark, but hey its Guatemala! That is something that is totally different here in Solola, most of the kids kind of do their own thing without the supervision of their parents. There are definitely some parents that don’t allow their kids to roam the streets, but i’d say a lot of them do. Sometimes you will even see an 8 or 9 year old girl walking around with a baby on her back. There are a lot of things that I have seen here that would be shocking to see in the States, but here it is totally normal. I have to mention one of those things being that men basically pee wherever they want. A couple examples: A man was walking in front of us with his grandson on his shoulders, stops, turns to the wall, and pees. We were playing in a chamusca the other night and the goalie went behind the goal to pee while we were playing. One of the many other culturally strange things is that women breast feed wherever they want. They will be walking down the street with their breast hanging out. My favorite is when they are in the market trying to sell something while breast feeding. I could go on and on about all the weird things they do here!
Anyways, after practice last Thursday Steph and I decided to hop on a bus to head to Belize. We had been talking about it for a while, but we weren’t sure if we were actually going to make the trek alone. We said what the hell, packed out bags, and caught the bus from UVG after practice. The bus ride to the city usually takes around 3 hours, but I guess we picked the bus that was being driven by a former nascar driver. We were sitting three to a seat, so it was already uncomfortable, but this bus was flying around corners so you had to hold on tight. As we were arriving in the city I looked down at my watch and it was 1 p.m., which meant we had only been on the bus for 2 hours! But we got off at the stop by Wal-Mart, because a friend was going to pick us up there to take us to the next bus station. It was so weird going in Wal-Mart, I felt like I was in the States again! There were people giving samples everywhere though, which they don’t really do at the wal-mart back home. A couple hours later our friend picked us up and while we were driving he proceeded to tell us that where he is taking us is extremely unsafe. A couple years ago I guess he saw someone get shot on a motorcycle right beside him! That made us feel good, but we were lucky to have him to take us there. We got there, bought the ticket, and the bus was leaving in 10 minutes, so off we went to Puerto Barrios, Guatemala. The bus was actually super nice, and had air conditioning. A little different than the school buses we are used to riding. The ride was supposed to take 5 hours, but ended up taking over 6 hours! I think we stopped on the side of the road 20 times to pick people up or let people pass! When we finally arrived and stepped off the bus, it was probably 30 degrees hotter and about 100% humidity. We got in late, so we immediately got a hostel, which ended up being THE grossest place I’ve stayed in my life. There were cob webs all over, the toilet didn’t flush, no toilet seat, and I don’t know what the hell was in the pillow case but it definitely didn’t feel like a pillow. I didn’t even take off the cloths I wore that day, and I used my rain jacket as my pillow. I think we maybe slept a total of 2 hours that night, but it didn’t really matter because we were that much closer to Belize!
The next morning we had to get our passports stamped and pay a fee to exit Guatemala before we caught a boat to Punta Gorda, Belize. The boat ride took a little over an hour, and once we got there and got our passports stamped we had to hurry to find a bank to exchange our money into Belize dollars. We ended up making the bus to take us to Independence/Mango Creek. We were back on the good ol’ school bus for about an hour and a half but we made it to where we needed to be. At Mango Creek we had to take a water taxi over to Placencia, which was our final destination! I think we ended up making it there around 3:30 p.m. and we left Solola the previous day at 11 p.m. We met a guy, Omar, in Mango Creek, and he had a ‘guesthouse’ for $30 Belize a night ($15 USD). We decided to stay there, because it was one house away from the water. The town was pretty neat, because a lot of the houses were actually built on the beach. It was like 2 blocks of houses on the beach, so not all of them were water front but it was still really neat. I’m not sure if I explained that clearly, but basically it was a very cool beach town. A lot of the hotels in the area where we were, were called ‘guest houses’. We basically just had a room with 2 beds and a fan and then there was a bathroom for all the rooms to share. By no means was this nice, but it was cheap and really close to the water! Once we got our room, we went straight to the beach and spent as long as we could. We were pretty hungry so we went and explored the town a little, and checked out the different restaurants. We decided on The Barefoot Bar, which was really close to where we were staying. The food was actually really, really good and we ended up getting drinks and sitting there for a while. We actually went back later in the night, and had some drinks and listened to this really good Reggae band that was playing.
The first night of sleep was hot, but better than the night in Puerto Barrios. We went to the beach pretty early and spent most of the day there. At the Barefoot Bar they were having a horse shoe tournament, so we went and signed up. I think I got 2 points the whole time, but Steph was pretty good! After that we went back to the room and showered before dinner. Omar, also had a restaurant and had been gone all day catching fish and lobster for dinner. He promised to save us a lobster for dinner, so we went there. So we had lobster for dinner that was literally caught 3 hours before, and it was delicious! We were pretty exhausted from spending the day in the sun, so we went back to the room fairly early seeing that we had to get up at 6 to catch the first boat back to Mango Creek.
I woke up at like 5:15 to the sound of pouring rain. I stepped outside and it looked like a hurricane! It was raining so hard, thundering, and the wind was insane. In my head I was thinking there was no way we were going to make it out of here in an hour. But by the time we had to leave, surprisingly everything had calmed down and we made the first boat over! I forgot to mention we were trying to make the trip back to Solola in one day this time. So, we thought we were in good shape getting to Mango Creek so early and we would catch an early bus back to Punta Gorda. We quickly made the trek to the bus stop, and ended up finding out that the first bus doesn’t come until 10! It didn’t end up coming to closer to 11, so we ended up sitting there for 3 hours, and at this point I was not a happy camper. Anyways we finally got on the crowded bus, sweating already, and on our way to Punta Gorda. Luckily we got there in time to buy a boat ticket, get our passport stamped, pay a fee to exit the country, and make the boat so we didn’t have to wait 2 hours for the next one. The boat ride was probably the most relaxing thing all day! We made it to Puerto Barrios, got our passports stamped (once again) and started walking to find the Latigue Bus station to get us back to the City. Since it was Sunday, the bus schedule was a little different, but we only had to wait an hour or so for the next bus. This bus ticket cost more than our first one, so we thought it would be a nicer bus, but it turned out to be way worst! The bus was full, the seats were way less comfortable, and the air barely worked!! It was in the 90’s and about 100% humidity outside, so a bus full of people with no windows open was far from comfortable. They played the movie the Notebook in Spanish, so that took my mind off the heat a little. At this point we were way off track in our timing, so there was no way that we could make it all the way back to Solola. Luckily, we called Luis from a pay phone in Puerto Barrios and he set up for Jose Antonio (taxi driver who originally took us from Guate to Solola in June!) to be waiting for us at the Litegua Bus station and take us to a hostel. If we wouldn’t of had him there waiting for us I don’t know what we would do at 9:30 in a very unsafe part of Guate! He took us to this hostel that was someones room in a house, very strange, but we went straight to bed. We woke up at 5 the next morning, because Jose Antonio was picking us up to take us to where the chicken bus was. THANK GOD FOR JOSE ANTONIO!!! We ended up getting on a bus that we thought was going straight to Solola, but it actually ended up going through Antigua! It took us over 3 hours to get back, but I think Steph and I slept 2 out of those 3 hours! Everytime I woke up there was a new person next to me, that’s how many times we stopped. At one point I woke up and everyone was getting off the bus, except Steph and I, and I had no clue where we were. But we made it back to UVG a little after 9, just in time for practice! Of course, it turns out that the girls were in the Parade or something that day so there was no practice. Basically we woke up at 5 for nothing, but oh well it felt good to finally make it back! To say the least our travels to Belize were an adventure, but it was definitely worth it!
We had no idea that there were going to be Parades going on this week, so it was hard to get around in Solola. The city was absolutely packed with people and there was stuff going on everywhere! It was Monday, so we had practice with the pequenos (my favorite practice). Unfortunately, not that many girls showed up because they didn’t have school or anything because of all the festivities going on. Luckily my favorite girls (I know I shouldn’t have any!) did show up, and we had a fun practice. After practice we played a shooting game with the guy that manages the field, and Steph and I won once again! That night we had our last chamusca in Pana :(, which is one of the things I am going to miss the most. I have met so many nice people through playing down there, and always have such a good time playing with them. On Tuesday we had our despidida (going away party) with our girls. We bought a cake for everyone, played BINGO and musical chairs. After everything the girls made us cards, and a few of them made me tear up. Although the girls sometimes get on my nerves, I am going to miss them so much! Our girls were in the Parade on Wednesday morning, so I woke up early to try and see them. I ended up seeing 3 of them, but I really wanted to see Laura and Claudia dancing and didn’t see them. All the schools have been practicing for this Parade for a while now, and most of them have a marching band so all we have been hearing for the past couple weeks are marching bands. It was pretty entertaining seeing all of the things that the kids were dressed in, seeing the girls dance, and listening to the marching bands that mostly sounded terrible and played out of tuned instruments. There were hundreds of people everywhere and the Parade lasted about 3 hours and then they all ended in the soccer stadium.
The highlight of Wednesday and maybe the best part of this 2 and a half months started when Veronica and Wendy came to the office early at like 12:45. The had just finished with the Parade, and we felt bad making them walk home 30 minutes and back another 30 minutes for practice so we let them hang out in the office. I gave them some crackers and let them put peanut butter on them. There is no peanut butter here, so they have never had it and really enjoyed it. We layed down and watched a movie before practice. After practice we took them to Pollo Campero to eat pizza. They come from a poor family of I think 10 kids, and have never been out to eat. Wendy, the little one, loves hot sauce so when I told her that she could have picante on her pizza her eyes lit up! When we got there they put picante on their fingers and licked it off (they do this in the office with our picante too) while we were waiting for the pizza. We got Pepsi to drink, and they really enjoyed that because I don’t think they get that much. Once the pizza came the girls both enjoyed 2 and a half pieces of pizza with ketchup and picante! To think that they had never been out to eat before, and we were the first ones to take them was an amazing feeling. After we were done, we said our good-byes and they ran off with smiles on their faces! If I could take two things home from Guatemala it would be those girls, they will always hold a special place in my heart.
Yesterday we held a coaching clinic at UVG, which didn’t exactly go as planned. The director of the school sent out an invitation to a lot of the schools in the area, and told us there were about 25 coaches confirmed to attend the clinic. Of course, only 3 showed up, typical Guatemala. We showed a powerpoint and taught them some things in a class room before we went out to the field and showed them how to run a practice. When we first got out there, they had about 50 kids waiting for us to run a practice. That would be nearly impossible, so we ended up working with the 30 girls we have been working with in the previous weeks. It was a little hectic, but it ended up turning out alright. After the practice, we went back into the classroom and the three coaches all had very good comments and nice things to say about us. It’s hard to believe that, that was officially our last activity as volunteers for Futbol Sin Fronteras! Later in the night we were asked to walk around la feria (the fair) with a group of guys we play with in Solola. We started by walking around, and then playing fusbol for a while. There a fusbol tables everywhere, and it was actually really fun! We went to ride the ferris wheel but it was already closed, plus it was raining and lightening. The thing already goes way too fast, and doesn’t look very safe, so probably a good thing it was closed! After that we ate pizza, drank soda, and visited with each other, and by that time it was almost 11. It was fun to experience the fair with a group of Guatemalans!
I apologize for how long this post is, and if you read all the way until now, props to you! I can’t believe I only have 4 more days here, but it’s time to make the best of it. Gosh I’m going to miss this place ;(
