¿Qué pasó?

WAUW more than 2 months have passed since I left for Lago de Atitlan (“the Lake”), and by doing that also leaving you wonderful people without a clue what happened next :P As you can see, I’m really living in the present, enjoying every moment and not finding any time to sit down and write about it on the internet ;) (lo siento!)

I spent two wonderful weeks in San Marcos La Laguna at the Lake I described in my previous blog. It was awesome to have the time completely to myself, sleeping, doing yoga, sitting down and reading, staring at the lake, having great breakfasts in tropical places, beers at nice bars… and of course, it’s impossible to NOT meet nice people, so I spent a lot of dinners and drinks with a lot of great people. It also turned out to be a very spiritual explorative interesting two weeks. San Marcos is a hub for all kinds of spiritual/yoga/meditating/massage initiatives, attracting a lot of foreign people and forming a good ground for self exploratory and good conversations (if you want to, otherwise it’s also really easy to escape from all that and just chill at the rocks). I ended up doing a couple of cacao ceremonies which were very interesting. When you drink this cacao (processed in a special way), your heart starts pumping faster which increases the amount of oxygen in your brain about 30-40% in half an hour time. This helps to get into a very relaxed, meditative state. I also did two Bowen – Kinesiology ‘therapies’ which were very interesting (and pretty hard to explain in a few sentences).
Oh! And for the people who’ve been at San Marcos: yes, I jumped of the platform… twice :)

When the travel bug woke up again, I booked my bus to Xela (Quetzaltenango) for april 11. Daniel (USA), a new friend who I met in San Marcos and ‘lived with’ for 1 week, decided to come with me and together we explored Xela for two days. After that it was back to school for me! I started Spanish classes at “Juan Sisay” (http://www.juansisay.org/) and moved in with a Guatemalan family that wednesday the 13^th. This was the real start of my very fun, interesting, busy, busy, did I mention busy? time here in Xela. For 7 weeks I did 5 hours of Spanish in the mornings; activities (organized by the school or by ourselves), fitness, exploring the area and homework (!) in the afternoons; dancing in the evenings; getting out of town in the weekends and a whooole lot of other stuff :)
Activities included amongst others: visiting a natural sauna (Las Cumbres); ziplining above an astonishing coffee finka (plantation); celebrating Dias de las Madres with many teachers and other students according to real Guatemalan traditions (meaning: the whole group driving around town from 5 am, lighting fireworks and singing Mañanitas -special songs- for all the moms, then giving them hugs and presents); many parties on Fridays at the school (for graduation and welcoming new students); salsa classes; visiting the ruins of Takalik ‘Abaj; teaching English classes at a private primary school; visiting little villages nearby; watching all the football matches between Barcelona and Madrid at bars (and of course the finals with Barcelona) – just try to imagine the passionate fanatic swearing and screaming of the Latino’s :) ; hiking to the volcano crater lake Chicabal (2900m.); a bike tour through the rural areas outside Xela (which was amazing, and so great to be on a bike again!).

Also, I was having 3 meals a day with the family, that consists of a mom and dad (which is pretty cool, because in many families there are no dads (anymore)), abuelo (the grandfather, 90), 4 sons (11, 22, 24, 28) and the wife (21) and daughter (4) of the oldest son. I made a movie to show you guys the family, the house and my room, check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX_T-wlJJmo
And of course there was John, the fun and crazy Scottish guy that was studying and staying with the family as well. It was awesome to have the experience of living with a local family. There are many things I could tell about it, but it was mainly very interesting for me to get such an insight of how people live here, how the culture and family-life here is so different from home, how delicious the traditional food is… The family was very welcoming, friendly and also very conservative and pretty strict with certain things.
Since I was living in the family during the final week of Lent, Semana Santa (see previous blog), we celebrated together by going to see the processions and eat at one of the many streetfood places that were set up in town. Two of the sons were participating in the processions. That weekend (easter) we also went to Baul together, a recreative area on a mountain nearby. The day I moved in with the family I went to the football stadion with the youngest son, to watch a game of Xela’s team and it’s hardcore supporters that were jumping, singing and shouting muchas malas palabras (bad words) during the whole game :)
In my last week I finally managed to cook the family some typical Dutch food… Hutspot, haha! I think they liked it ;) It was also the birthday of the little girl (turning 4y) that week, so I got to join a birthday party WITH piñata and family dinner.

I chose Xela to study Spanish for many reasons, an important one being that there are many volunteer projects and NGO’s based in and around this city. After exploring a few of them, I started working with kids at Caras Alegres on may 24^th (http://www.carasalegres.org/).
I found out only after contacting them that the project is set up by Dutch people :) They are not here now, but the project does receive a fair amount of volunteers from Holland. Caras Alegres aims to help women and children in Las Rosas, a poor neighborhood at the outskirts of Xela. They employ Guatemalan people and offer different projects:
Daycare for very young kids; afterschool care for kids up to about 13y; women’s programs that aim to support and guide them to a more independent existence – there’s an literacy program and baking school (which provides the women with a diploma so they can work in bakeries); family support (there’s a social worker that goes out into the community to find out what the families need and offer support).

I’m working in the afterschool care and will tell you more about it soon, incl. pictures!
Andrea, the coordinator of Caras Alegres, is an awesome Guatemalan woman that offered me to come live with her in her apartment, also located in the centre of Xela. The two dutch girls, Marloes and Tanja, that were living there at the time (and also working at Caras) were leaving soon and I decided to grab the opportunity. I said goodbye to the family and moved all my stuff on monday June 6^th. Living with Andrea fun and super comfy and I can even borrow her second laptop and bike… how awesome is that!
In line with pretty much everyone I meet here in Xela, Marloes and Tanja didn’t really want to leave. It’s crazy how many people come here for a few days or weeks and end up staying months… although, I can fully understand now :) Anyways, because the girls were taking their time to say goodbye to everyone, I had the pleasure of living with them for 4 days which was very nice. Since I wasn’t speaking (hardly) any Dutch for a long time, I didn’t really realize before that I actually do like speaking in my own language every now and then… ;) Lekker babbelen in het Nederlands is toch anders, although the girls did need to be strict with me (“Nederlands! Geen Engels!”) :P Who would’ve imagined it could be so hard to switch back to your own language! Unfortunately, the pleasure of speaking Dutch also caused a pretty big brain mush at times, getting stuck between Dutch, English and Spanish. However, my Spanish is really improving and it’s great to be able to explain games to the kids and have conversations with many local people!

The week I moved to Andrea’s apartment, I also took a very much needed break from school. Finally a bit more time for myself, time for catching up with family and friends and sleeping. I was also helping Andrea with some stuff in the house and worked 4 days a week at the project.

Some other random stuff that has happened:

• I did my first “border run” to renew my visa, to Mexico (Puerta Mardera). It turned out that the people who I went with didn’t really have a clear plan, so the town we ended up with wasn’t very nice and the road to get there really long (taking all kinds of busses). Crossing borders in Central-America is also something special, and I was very happy I wasn’t on my own!! It was a valuable experience though, I learned a lot and even got to play Jungle Speed, yeah! :)
• I climbed two volcanoes: Santa Maria (3772 m.), which was a pretty intense climb (ascending 1300m in 3h and 15 min) and the Tajamulco (4220 m.). Both times we had a really fun group of students from Juan Sisay together and a great guide. Also both times, it was necessary to have very regular stops on the way up, since the air does get really ‘thin’ at those heights! We were super lucky with the weather, since it rains already a LOT this time of the year. Santa Maria brought us great views –also on the active volcano Santiaguito- and Tajamulco is absolutely the most awesome hike I’ve done so far on my trip! 
  It was a 2 day trip: going up the first day, making camp, sipping whiskey around a campfire, getting up at 4am to start hiking up the last 200m to the top under a super bright star sky, watching the sunrise and many of the volcanoes spread out over Guatemala above the clouds, hiking down for breakfast, packing up camp and descending through the beautiful landscape with great views all around!
  If you want more info about the volcanoes, I found this pretty cool site: http://www.mayaparadise.com/volcanos/volguatee.htm (there are 3 active volcanoes in Guate, unlike the site states, Santa Maria is not one of them. Only Pacaya, Fuego and Santiaguito).
• I traveled to the Lake again for 2,5 days, together with friends from Juan Sisay who were leaving Xela. Staying in San Pedro on this occasion, we had a great time chilling, eating, kayaking…
• Jungle Speed is taking over the world! YEAH!! Everyone loves it, Everwhere :) In Mexico, on top of the Tajamulco, at Lago de Atitlan, in bars :D

All my love to you wonderful people!