Are you going to Scarborough fair?

Well I didn't go to Scarborough fair, but I did go to the one in San Juan!

This week was the San Juan Ferria (or the fair in San Juan la Laguna). Each pueblo has their own patron saint an ours is Saint John the Baptist. The ferria is a huge party/celebration full of concerts, street vendors, special foods, decorations, dancing, and of course, lots of pasear-ing! (The verb pasear is used to describe walking around town with your friends.) There is also a huge ferris wheel that we rode on numerous times!

The ferria takes over the entire town for about a week. Classes are cancelled, people dress up and everyone enjoys themselves. (Sometimes the men enjoy themselves too much and drink until they are passed out on the street.)

Because my house is on a main street, I could just barely squeeze into the alley that leads to my courtyard because of all the vendeors that were in front of my house. The vendors also loved to play horrible mariachi music from 5am through the day and night until 2am the next morning every night. And they also liked to put their speakers right outside my door so I could hear every note, including the occasional Michael Jackson or Avril Lavigne tune they would play. Needless to say, I will need to catch up on my sleep soon!

But overall the ferria was a blast! It was great to experience this part of the community. We were so lucky to be there.

Speaking foreign language, nothing I can translate

Well actually.. I can translate.. and I DID translate!

This past week was by far my most fulfilling and remarkable week in Guatemala so far. This week the a team of medical students, a doctor, and a physical therapist visited the clinic to do a series of medical jornadas (essentially traveling clinics). Liza is placed at the clinic, but they asked me to translate for them as well and I was very excited for the opportunity. It wound up being one of the most incredible things I have done in my entire life.

As a team, we visited 3 small "aldeas" or outlying municipalities of our town San Juan. We also went to San Pablo and were in our own clinic on Friday. Mary, the 25 year old clinic administrator from Colorado, was awesome at organizing everything. (She moved down here after graduation planning on staying for one year and she is on her 3rd year here. She pretty much runs the clinic and is such a cool person. Everyone here knows Mary, and her puppy, Lukie. She is like the local celebrity, and rightfully so. She works so hard and everyone here appreciates her.)

All of the indigenous Mayan people living around the lake speak 1 or more of the 23 mayan languages. I believe 3 of them are spoken around the lake. Some, especially the older people, do not speak Spanish, so for each doctor there are two translators. One who translates English/Spanish (like me!) and one who translates Spanish/Tz'utujil or Spanish/Quiche, depending on the aldea. It was incredible as a translator to be able to send information to a patient and receive information back! It was like a huge game of telephone at times. Sometimes we did not need the Mayan translator if the patient was comfortable speaking Spanish with me.

Overall the experience this week was so inspiring. These people really need medical attention and would not have gotten it if we were not there to help them. Everyone was so grateful to us for coming, but I was so thankful that I was able to have the experience of translating for them. It was truly life-changing.

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

This weekend our group took a long weekend in Antigua, a beautiful Spanish-colonial city in Guatemala about 3 hours away from Lake Atitlan. There are tons of ruins, cathedrals, shops…some pretty cool architecture happening there. Definitely worth a stop if you’re near by.

I particularly enjoyed my, Liza, and Hailey’s visit to this one convent where there is this part where you stand in the middle of a circular courtyard and are supposed to be able to hear whispers from throughout the convent. It was pretty awesome. There was also this dungeon place that was extremely echo-y….it was kind of a sketchy find, but once Liza, Hailey and I were down there, I couldn’t resist singing songs from The Sound of Music…I mean we were in a convent after all.

This was probably the best day of the trip…the day was super rainy and we were drenched the whole time, but it was SO fun! It was also the worst day because I dropped my delicious avocado and tuna leftovers from lunch just steps from our hotel after safeguarding it all day through the torrential rain and other obstacles.

I comforted myself by creating a slip and slide in the outdoor hallway of our hotel using a blanket and the slippery floor.

Me and Julio down by the schoolyard

This week was my first teaching at LISI. I taught Monday-Wednesday because we are going to Antigua tomorrow for a long weekend! I have to wake up early for school…5:45 every morning! I have to be at the school at 6:45. And generally I find it necessary to stop at Liza's house (which is right next to my school) to jump on her bed at around 6:32 each morning.

At LISI, there are three grades….4^th, 5^th, and 6^th, and I am with the 4^th and 5^th grade for only 30 minutes each day, and with 6^th grade for 90 minutes each day. I am supposed to be teaching English, but the school’s idea of teaching English and my idea of it are two different things! I am supposed to read from an English for Business textbook that does not have correct English grammar and do a lot of practice with pronunciation with the girls.

I am looking forward to being creative with the classes and with my time that I have with each class of 20 girls. I memorized almost all of their names this week, which was quite the feat!

I'm on a boat everybody, take a look at me

Saturday I went kayaking on the lake! Scheduled to be in our kayaks at 10am, Liza, Katina, Elena, Tito, Clarita, and I finally got to the muelle at 11:30! This is becoming very normal. We rented three kayaks and set sail for las Cristalinas, a beach of rocks near the pueblo of San Marcos. It took us about an hour to get there because Elena and Tito were having some trouble getting the hang of paddling!

We got to the beach and were the only ones there. We played Left Right Center (which is very difficult when you are playing in Spanish, because the game is in English…and I have trouble knowing left from right anyway.) Then Liza and I started reading Barefoot, a book that a random lady in Pana gave us the other day.

When it came time to leave, we figured we would switch up the kayak partners so that it would take less time getting across. So we split up the two novices and somehow, Liza and I ended up in a one-person kayak with only one paddle. So there we were, after helping to push off the other two boats, trying to make our way across the lake. I was in back, my right hand acting as a rudder and my left a paddle, and Liza sat in front of me to paddle. Of course, this would not be my life if Xocomil, the name of the strong afternoon wind that blows across the lake every day, was not in full force. So of course, it was, and we fought Xocomil the entire way back to San Juan. We have some fun stories about that voyage. And also a pretty rough sunburn to prove it!

When I got back to my house, Clarita and I looked at the photos we took and sang Miley Cyrus songs…I spend the rest of the night translating them for her! Haha.

Today we woke up and went to mass...I finally found out what all the bombas were for...every time the priest says mass, they set off bombs/fireworks...usually during Communion.

Hey, everything's right

The rest of this week was great! I started my language classes...4 hours every day. Sounds like a lot, but I couldn't believe how quickly the time flew! I have an amazing instructor, Vilma, who is about 27 years old and sort of a rebel in terms of Mayan culture. She doesn't wear the traditional traje here like most women do...she wears "normal" clothes. I hope I learned some Spanish but I'm not sure if I did because we were laughing about something pretty much every 2.7 minutes... (No, we studied too...but it was so much fun and we had some cool conversations!) I am a little bummed that I only get 2 weeks of these conversation classes!

On Wednesday, I met with Daniel, my supervisor at the LISI school where I will be teaching English starting on Monday. I was meant to meet with him at 10, but in typical Guatemalan style, he showed up at my house at around quarter to 11 :) He showed me the school and we talked about what I will be doing at LISI, a school for young women ages 15-21 who are studying to be bilingual secretaries. They are actually going to be trilingual....all of them speak Spanish and Tz'utujil (a Mayan dialect), and they are all learning English.

Also on Wednesday, Liza and I stopped at this little coffee shop down by the muelle (dock). We had run into this guy named Carlos, who essentially lives (we think) at the hotel behind the shop, a few days earlier, and he told us we had to try the coffee there. We treated ourselves to a delicious iced coffee...and we were not disappointed.

On Thursday and Friday, because I still did not have to teach yet, I went with Liza to the clinic she is working at for the summer. It was so cool to see this place! Joanne, a woman around 60 years old from Texas, moved down here about 9 years ago and started the clinic. The place is immaculately clean compared to the alley of dirt and rocks that leads up to it. I am going to be doing some medical translating for them this summer when they have clinics...We'll see how that goes...I am excited to see how I will do!