By the numbers...

• 200 000: people murdered by the Guatemalan military during the civil war.
• 36: years of brutal civil war
• 50: strawberry licuados (smoothies) consumed..probably a low estimate
• 40: times a prof has had to get Pavel to stop, slow down, and repeat himself. (incoherent babble......ZUGAIIIII!)
  
• 5000: number of homicides in a year in Guatemala city alone (for comparison...we get around 30 a year in Vancouver. They get 30 on a bad night.)
• 4000: approximate number of coffee cherries I picked at the coffee co-op.
• 2000: approximate number of coffee cherries I had to throw out because they were bad :(
• 1000: number of bricks moved during Habitat project.
• 946: approximate number of hours spent on a bus
• 29: Gravol pills consumed during said hours spent on bus
• 25: breakfasts eaten at Maya Cafe (fried eggs, beans and tortillas. mmmmm.)
• 45: number of indegenous peasant families evicted from their land this year with little or no compensation by Canadian mining companies (anyone investing in Goldcorp?)
• 73: number of sandfly/bedbug/mosquito bites received on break week
• 3: number of bottles of placebo itch cream we went through
• 98: percent of all crimes that go unpunished in Guatemala
• 16: litres of sweat produced by all of us at the Pacific Coast. so. hot.
  
• 9: number of marshmallows roasted and eaten on top of molten MAGMA at Volcan Pacaya.
• 15: quetzales, cost of a tuk tuk ride home in Antigua (whiplash is free)
• 7: number of essays written, in 9 weeks of class
  
• 6: number of travel plans screwed up by Adrenalina Tours (out of a total of 6). fail.
  
• 5: lobster kebabs eaten (over a period of 3 and a half days)
• 4: number of earthquakes felt while in Guatemala
• 5.9: richter scale magnitude of the biggest one
  
• 2: number of volcanoes climbed
• 1: amazing learning experience.
  

Long awaited update (lo siento....)

Hey everyone...sorry about the lack of updates in the last while but we have been busy busy busy here at Liberal Arts Boot Camp!

We are now well into class number two which is a nice change from philosophy as it is much more concrete, focused on real-world situations and involves a lot more discussion. I did take some benefit away from philosophy though; it kind of made me realize why I want to go into law and why I find law so interesting- it is such a beautifully basic expression of the human capability of reason. That being said, I am very glad I´m not a philosophy major. Although I do enjoy a good toga...hmmm.....

The last few weekends have been jam packed full of trips to different places around the country. Three weeks ago (oops, blog slacking..) we went to the Pacific Coast for the weekend and stayed at a private beach house that belonged to one of our Spanish teachers´families. It was beautiful and sunny and HOT HOT HOT. I was covered in a film of sweat and sunscreen and bugspray for the whole weekend. The house was located about 20 minutes outside of a ´town´ called Churirin which is another half hour outside of an actual town called Tulate. We were basically in the middle of nowhere but it was awesome. It was the kind of place where hammock-sitting and shooing the pig out of the restaurant is a lucrative occupation. Very slow paced (and with good reason...you would melt if you moved any faster)....and beautiful.

The weekend after that (one week ago) we went on a field trip to a city called Huehuetenango which is close to the Mexican border, and the following day to a tiny town called Todos Santos. Todos Santos means ¨All Saints¨...and November 1st was All Saints´Day. Therefore, Todos Santos= big Guatemalan party. The town explodes with visitors on Todos Santos Day and there are wild drunken horse races and a carnival and all sorts of crazy things...the entire town is dry for the whole year except for this day so there are Guatemalans passed out all over the place and it is generally just a madhouse. The men (who normally in Guatemala wear Western-style clothing) are all dressed in their bright stripy woven pants and shirts and there is just so much colour everywhere it was unbelievable. Unfortunately the weather was horrible so we had to leave early (in order to make it down the mountain road without sliding off a cliff...phew...) and missed most of the horse races...but all in all it was really great.

This past weekend was one of the highlights of the whole trip for me. A group of eleven of us spent the weekend at a coffee co-op about two hours out of Xela. The co op is called Santa Anita La Union ( http://www.santaanitafinca.com/index.html ) and is run by a group of ex-guerillas from the civil war, who moved down from the mountains after the war ended in 1996 and bought this massive piece of land to run as a coffee production co-op together. There are 35 families living on the co-op and they have a school, small businesses, and a shitload of coffee (and bananas). It´s kind of funny...in a country that is such a democratic mess, this tiny little enclave reminded me of that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where those peasant farmers have the commune and King Arthur and co. come by and are alll ¨Where is your king?¨ ¨King? I didn´t vote for a king...!¨¨etc...it was kind of refreshing to see people working together and not skimming money off the top of the pot. It was a really progressive environment...all the kids are required to be in school, the coffee is organic and sold at fair-trade prices, the women are treated equally and everyone was just REALLY HAPPY.

We picked coffee for about 4 hours on Saturday morning which was definitely an enlightening experience. The coffee we picked essentially grows on the side of a cliff, and you wear a basket around your waist and kind of monkey-swing between coffee plants and pick off the ripe coffee cherries. I will definitely never look at coffee the same way again...it was kind of weird picking coffee and then going back for lunch and drinking a cup of it. Saturday afternoon involved dumping all the coffee that was picked onto a big tarp and then sitting around it in a circle picking out the rotten cherries! Mmmm rotting fruit. The really cool part was then dumping it into a machine that takes off the outer cherry part and spits out the coffee beans into a big concrete thing where they are then dried and roasted and shipped to North America for your drinking pleasure! The co op was an awesome experience, the people were amazing and I am now going to hound you all to BUY FAIR TRADE COFFEE! (Interestingly enough, Starbucks is the single biggest buyer of fair-trade coffee all around the world so you can drink your grande caramel macchiatos guilt free!).

Alas...I need to go and work on one of my zillion essays but I will be posting more pictures as soon as I can get my hands on a functioning computer.

See you all in a month!

Love Caroline

lago de atitlan!

Somehow Thanksgiving has come and gone already...although we didn´t exactly do ye olde Turkey dinner. I did accidentally eat tongue though...but I would rather not talk about that ever again.

We spent the weekend on a field trip to Lago de Atitlan, which is a lake surrounded by a ring of volcanoes about 2 and a half hours outside of Xela. We got to Panajachel (the biggest town on the lakeshore) midday on Friday and went straight to the nature reserve where we saw MONKEYS and went ziplining! The zipline was awesome...there were 8 different lines that went basically back and forth through different parts of a canyon that went down towards the lake, so we overlooked the whole lake from the middle of the canyon on the zipline. Unfortunately we had to use our hands to brake on the line so, no pictures!

Pana was a big change from spending the last couple weeks in Xela- it was much more touristy and gringos are definitely treated differently than we are in Xela. Pretty much everyone in Pana speaks basic English, or at least enough to say ´good price for you! business! business!´which was a little bit of a downer, as soon as we tried to start speaking in Spanish, for the most part they would switch to English. People in Xela are extremely patient with broken Spanish and really try to help you learn, which is something I definitely take for granted.

On Saturday we got up early and hopped on a boat to go to a couple different sites around the lake. In the morning we went to a town called Santiago, which was severely affected by both the civil war (which ended in 1996) and a big landslide during Hurricane Stan in 2005. We visited some of the sites where they have rebuilt and saw some serious consequences of bureaucratic inefficiency; there was an open field with about 75 uninhabited houses built out of concrete that simply lacked roofs, and about 100 feet away, about 75 cardboard shacks that people are living in that don´t even keep the rain out. The government began to build the concrete houses and then simply decided that their location was within a ´landslide hazard´zone and that anyone who lived in these houses would have their future rights to relocation in the case of a disaster taken away. Still, there are about 75 families living in shacks in the exact same spot who ARE covered for relocation in case of disaster. So there are essentially 75 perfectly good concrete houses just sitting there doing nothing, and people living in shacks right down the street, and there is no good reason why they are not being used. Ahh bureaucracy.

After a tasty lunch in Santiago, we hopped back on the boat and went across the lake to San Juan where we visited a women´s weaving co op. They do everything there from start to finish, and it is all with natural dyes. We saw the dying process which was really neat- there is one plant that gives off a brighter colour depending on where in the lunar cycle it is harvested! Pretty cool stuff. There are 18 women that work at the co op, and they run the whole business themselves...but they need a bigger market to sell their goods in (anyone interested in importing natural dyed Guatemalan weaving....?).

Sunday we came back to Xela via Chichicastenango which is an ENORMOUS textile and trinket market. It was pretty overwhelming, there was stuff and people everywhere for blocks and blocks and blocks. I did manage to find some cool stuff however...Dad, my bargaining skills have improved a lot since Mexico don´t worry!

Coming back to Xela was really nice and felt like coming home which was a great feeling to have after being in Guatemala for almost a month. Monday was back to the grind in class...we had our first essay due yesterday morning so the last couple days have been work work work! That´s pretty much the pattern from now on as our next essay is due Tuesday, and classes are pretty intensive after that.

Hope turkey weekend was good for everyone!

xo Caroline

what a Sunday...

Wowwwawweewa, what an awesome day! I dragged my butt out of bed at 5am this morning to climb a volcano with 7 other people from the group. It was absolutely stunning and perfect weather for the hike. The volcano is called Chicabal and is about 45 minutes outside of Xela. It had a huge eruption in 1902 but has been dormant since then (phew). The volcano is about 2800 metres high, and I could definitely feel the altitude even at the change of a few hundred feet...it was a challenge to catch my breath for sure. Not that I am out of shape or anything... (note the lovely back sweat in the picture...definitely didn't notice that until I uploaded it on here. oops. sorry.) The top of the volcano is basically a huge crater from the 1902 eruption, with a lake in it that is an astounding 900 feet deep (and is maybe 100 feet across, very small). The lake is a sacred Mayan site with all sorts of Mayan altars around the perimeter of the lake- swimming is forbidden as it 'dirties' the water. Our guide was really cool, and we learned lots about the eruption, the volcano and the Mayan community around it. We were back in Xela by around 1- just in time to take part in the massive festival that is happening this weekend! Each town in Guatemala has kind of its own patron saint, and the festival for ours (something about a Rosaria....sorry for my ignorance...) is this weekend. Basically this results in a MASSIVE market in the Parque Central with all sorts of cool street food and trinkets...little rides (for guatemalan size people, I avoided getting stuck in them)....and endless entertainment!

I just thought it was so awesome that all in one day I climbed a volcano, went shopping at a huge festival market, and was back at home in time to do my readings for class tomorrow. Ahh Guatemala.

Hope you all had a good weekend!

xo Caroline

el terminado de Habitat...and more

Friday marked the end of our Habitat build in Xela. The build was definitely an enlightening experience for a number of reasons; dealing with the challenges of building a house with very limited resources and tools, seeing different areas of Xela (the wealthy and the not-so-fortunate), meeting and developing a relationship with a local family and our masons, and also developing relationships within our own team. We were lucky within our group to have our family present every single day on our build site- Don Tomas, the father of the family who is getting the house, was there every single day putting in a huge effort to get the house up (despite having back problems as a result of the 1976 earthquake, he fell off a two-story building in Honduras...yikes). Grecia (their 16 year old daughter) was there for as much as she could be as well and we ended up becoming good friends (at least I'm pretty sure, my spanish is still crude...haha). To end off the Habitat program, we had a goodbye ceremony on Friday with all of the masons, Habitat staff and the families. Grecia had gone out and gotten each of our seven team members bracelets with our 'spanish' names woven into them (i am Carol, Ian was 'Joan', Leah was 'Lia')...it was unbelievably sweet of her and we were all definitely a little teary-eyed during the ceremony- it was a really nice way to end off the project, and Don Tomas has invited us back to the house in a few week's time when they are all moved in! Exciting stuff.

Highlights of the week: my first Guatemalan motorcycle ride, a litter of PUPPIES!, birthday party Friday night with our Guatemalan buddies at their bar, finishing the build. Class starts Monday...hard to believe!

Later gators,

Caroline

construction, soccer, playboy grotto: Guatemala edition...

Getting into the groove of Xela, working our way into week 2! This week was full of a lot of really cool stuff. Habitat is going really well, by Friday of this week we should hopefully have something up that resembles a house (or at least walls and a roof). The weather makes construction difficult though...every day starting at around 1pm it pours like clockwork. Friday was so wet that we had to hide in our storage shed for half an hour, which ended up being awesome because we got some good bonding time with our construction guys. It is a slow process especially with no mechanical tools but we are moving steadily!

This weekend was awesome and jam packed with cool stuff, we have been busy busy beavers over here. Xela is a really funny city...in the last few days I have eaten really good Italian, Middle Eastern and vegetarian food in the middle of Guatemala. We found an awesome hangout restaurant on Friday night after trekking in the pouring rain to find a Thai restaraunt that had closed down a year ago (screw you, Lonely Planet)...and found this place that looks like a house on the inside. I had the best shwarma of my life for the equivalent of about $5 Cdn, got to play with puppies and hung out in a private dining room with six of us (and then migrated to a different lounge with couches after, in the same place. Amazing).

Saturday night was a little wild, our group went on a trip to a party at the Hot Springs which are about an hour outside of Xela. I am, however, convinced that we were actually teleported to the Playboy Mansion and were hanging out in Hugh Hefner´s playboy grotto. The experience was a little surreal...a group of gringos at the hotsprings, which came complete with a bar and a wild dance floor, with people drinking literally in the hot springs (there are no laws in this country). It was a ton of fun and everyone made it back alive, more or less.

Hangover remedy today consisted of our first authentic Guatemalan soccer experience! We lucked out and the game today was against Xela´s biggest rivals, Guatemala City. The game was at noon so we headed down to the stadium at around 10 30 to get jerseys and tickets; we were lucky enough to be there with a local friend of ours who runs the internet cafe right by our hostel, Marcos. He gave us all the insider information (a.k.a. exactly which rude words to yell at the other team and which time, best place to sit, helped us haggle for jerseys etc) which was fantastic. The game was possibly the most fun I´ve had since I have been here. Guatemalans are seriously into their ´futbol´ and it´s definitely contagious! We won, 2-0 and to celebrate, went to a bar which was owned by Marcos´close friend, who opened it up just for us to hang out! It was amazing to finally make some connections with a few local people and I think we are going to make some good friends.

The internet cafe is about to close and it´s another early building morning tomorrow so adios for now! More to come eventually!

xo Caroline

Habitat and more..

Hey everyone,

The last couple of days have been really exciting; we began our Habitat build yesterday and will continue it for the next two weeks. On Sunday we had a ceremony where we met all the families who we are building houses for- it was very powerful to see who we are going to be helping rather than just building without a face. My team is building for a family that has a 16 year old daughter, Grecia, who I got a chance to hang out with and attempt to converse with at the worksite yesterday which was awesome. She was laughing at me and said that `talking to me is like talking to a baby´ because I don´t understand anything and can barely speak! She was joking though...I hope...but it´s definitely a work in progress!

The Habitat project itself is awesome. We are building a four-room house, spent most of yesterday mixing/pouring concrete into the foundation which was definitely a new experience for me! Unfortunately I have been pretty sick so I ended up falling asleep at the worksite between a pile of rocks and sand used for the concrete mix...pretty funny. I stayed home today to recover and then it´s back to the grind tomorrow! It´s really interesting to see an entire house being built without a single machine. Our team has seven people including one prof...five girls and two guys. We have three Guatemalans working on the site as well, the head mason (Jorge) and two apprentices who are really funny guys, and thankfully know what they are doing (although it´s definitely a challenge for them to give us instructions in Spanish...). The Habitat site has a beautiful view of most of Xela as we are a little bit outside of the city on the side of a mountain, and there are a few other Habitat homes in the area. One of the Habitat residents in the area came over to talk to us for a while yesterday and brought her 3 year old twins, Gabriel and Gabriela (SOOO CUTE).

Today I had my first Guatemalan fast-food experience...we went to Pollo Campero which is the Guat. equivalent of KFC. It is hilarious...they actually bring you a menu and take your order at the table...I had a `hamburguesa de pollo´which was very tasty...and greasy...nomnomnom. Tomorrow, back to beans and tortillas! The hostel has been cooking breakfast for us every morning so we have gotten to try some cool Guatemalan stuff- yesterday morning was`mosh´, which is a porridge type creation with oats and milk and cinnamon...realllly good, along with tortillas and beans, ha ha. The amount and variety of street food here is awesome...tooo tempting to grab a cheesy tortilla with corn and veggies on the side of the road...but the prospect of bonding with the toilet for the next few days has held me back. No stomach problems so far though, thank you Dukoral!

The rest of this week holds Habitat, Habitat and more Habitat, and then as a little reward for ourselves we are planning to hit the hot springs on Saturday which sounds fantastic. Hope all is well in North America!

Will update soon!

xo Caroline

Getting settled!

We are settling into our second day in the city of Xela after a gorgeous bus ride yesterday from Guatemala City. The roads here are actually brand new, better than a lot of roads at home surprisingly! No 8 hour Kenya road trip repeat here. We stopped at some Mayan ruins along the way which was pretty cool and got us all excited to be here. The city of Xela is an absolutely wonderful place so far; it´s kind of the Goldilocks city of Guatemala or so I have found...not too big, not too small, juuuust right. The city revolves around the `Parque Central´ (pictures to come soon), and our hostel is only four blocks away from it. The city is very interesting to look at as it´s kind of a mishmash of architecture; it is separated into ´Zonas´ which vary substantially both aesthetically and functionally. Our hostel and the Parque Central are both located within Zona 1, which is the colonial part of town, full of nicer restaurants, the main central banks, courthouse etc and nicer cafes. The town was destroyed by an earthquake in 1902, and was rebuilt shorty thereafterwith Gothic style buildings, there are lots of very grandiose buildings surrounding the Parque and throughout Zona 1. The other main area of our concern is Zona 3, which we found yesterday during our explorations; it is the commercial centre of town and holds a massive market where you can buy anything from mangoes to TV´s that are straight from the 70s.

The hostel itself where we are staying is a very cute little place- I lucked out and got a single bedroom on the second floor and I am in love with it. The walls are sunny yellow, the ceiling is sloping paneled wood, the walls have exposed brick and I have beautiful little carved wooden shelves to store stuff. AND, two electrical outlets (bonus!) The hostel is pretty basic- we have two showers for 26 people which could be a bit of a challenge...and one and a half fridges...so it´s going to take some adjusting but I´m sure it will work itself out. There is a ´courtyard´in the middle of the hostel, which in reality is a 20 by 20 foot hole in the roof which is fantastic when it´s sunny, but is just a big hole in the roof when it rains (the drainage system in the hostel is pretty good though and the potted plants love it!)

I successfully got a cell phone yesterday (20 bucks US for a phone and 50 international minutes...ridiculous) and have ordered at 3 restaurants in Spanish and gotten what I ordered every time. Great success! The lanaguage is definitely going to be a challenge, but mostly an issue of confidence- the locals are very willing to help and appreciate my valiant efforts to communicate (phew).

Will update soon after we start the Habitat project this Monday!

Hasta luego,

Caroline xox

Landed!

Hola chicos!

I have officially become a gringa...landed safely in Guatemala city, made it to the hostel with the rest of our group and am now taking a break from hanging out on the rooftop patio drinking cervezas (with our professors. This is going to be a good semester).

Flights were smooth- we had a short layover in Dallas and it´s true, everything is bigger in Texas. I had a salad the size of my head (complete with BBQ sauce IN the salad and deep fried tortilla bits...bye bye arterial blood flow...) that was served by a waitress with hair the size of Texas, on a giant indoor `patio´ inside the airport. We also discovered a shop that sold lollipops with real scorpions in the middle...needless to say I did not partake...but overall Texas was hilarious.

We are taking a bus to Xela tomorrow and I am excited to get a sense of the country- right now all I have seen is customs and the inside of the shuttle to the hostel. My Spanish is clearly lacking- we were waiting for our luggage and trying to converse in Spanish and a local was chuckling in the corner at our attempts...ohhhh dear....alll in due time I suppose....

Anyways, that´s all for now folks...will update when I get to Xela!

Much love xoxo

Hola from Vancouver!

"You're going to what-the-heck country? Where?"

- direct quote from my mom upon telling her I was going to be spending three months in Guatemala.

I didn't know much more about the country than she did at that point, only that it was a fairly poor, small country with a wealth of Mayan ruins (ooooh, Indiana Jones...). I initially was convinced that Guatemala bordered Panama and Costa Rica (wrong) and that I was going to be hanging out on a beach for three months (also wrong). For this reason, I decided to blog my experience under 'what-a-mala' as I discover and learn more about the country, its people and myself during my term abroad. 

Here is a basic rundown of my trip for those of you who I have left in the dark:

I have been in Vancouver doing a crash-course of Spanish 101 from September 1st until this Wednesday- hablo mucho espanol! yo quiero taco bell....dos cervezas por favor....aye carumba! I think I am in good shape...at least, we will see when I get my final grade....

We depart Vancouver this Thursday September 17, layover in Dallas (I am so excited as I have always secretly wanted to go to the American South...) and finally arrive in Guatemala City around 7 in the evening. We will be overnighting in Guatemala city (don't worry Dad they are escorting us to a safe hotel and we are not allowed to go out in the city), followed by a 4 or 5 hour bus ride to our home base, Quetzaltenango, for the next two months. 

Quetzaltenango, known by the locals as Xela (thank goodness because I go cross eyed looking at the first name let alone trying to pronounce it) is a town of about 140 000 people located in the Western Highlands of the country. It is heavily influenced by Maya culture and is reportedly a wonderful spot to base yourself as it is quite safe, beautiful and foreigner-friendly. Xela is one of the foremost towns for Spanish-language schools in Central America and has built up quite a reputation for capturing tourists for much longer than they intended to be there, as a place to build firm local, intercultural friendships, and as a place to establish a sense of community. 

We will be living in a hostel which we have block-booked as a group (26 UBC students and three professors) for at least the first month (http://hostaldondiegoxela.com/ if you are curious...it is cute, clean but very basic). The first few days upon our arrival into Xela will be devoted to orientation and general settling-in, getting to know the rest of the group and exploring our new surroundings. On September 21st the work begins; we will be doing a two-and-a-half week Habitat for Humanity project, building sustainable housing alongside local workers. I am excited for this new experience as it will really give us a chance to practice our Spanish, and who knows, I could discover my future as a construction worker (doubtful but it will be an interesting experience nonetheless). Just to give you a sense of the practicality of our Spanish course- I can't tell you how to say anything in the past tense, but I can tell you how to say 'power drill' and 'wheelbarrow' and 'cement mixer'...ahh academia. 

Upon completion of the Habitat project, we will begin classes for the remainder of the term. While in Guatemala, we will be taking three courses, each in a three-week chunk; this will be quite an interesting change from the five-course-at-once model I am used to. I have finally met all three of the professors and they are all extremely gung-ho about the program and the learning models we will be using are unique and creative. We have been told not to bring laptops; most of the work we will be producing will be largely a reflection of what we have learned from our experiences and our surroundings- they call it 'experiental learning'. Definitely a big change from 3AM nights in the library cranking out research papers, but I am looking forward to it. The program is officially called the 'Arts Term Abroad in Global Citizenship', and so our courses have been themed accordingly. We begin with a Philosophy course called 'Contemporary Moral Issues: Global Citizenship', followed by a Sociology course- 'Perspectives on Global Citizenship' (see a theme yet?) and finishing up with Politics and Government of Latin America (much more my speed). I am very curious to see how the 'global citizenship' business evolves; right now I am inclined to perceive it as a vague blanket term of no concrete significance. Hopefully my understanding (or lack thereof) will continually grow and change over the next three months, and I think that is a big part of the program's aim.

I will leave it there for now, but will strive to update this blog as often as possible to keep you informed of my whereabouts and goings-on! Thank you all for your support and understanding as I venture into the unknown.

Hasta luego!

Love Caroline