Promises to be realized

word on the street is that @ El Salvador is putting on a Learning Day this weekend. It´s time for a road trip and realize some promises made back at LDS that i would come visit.  Let´s see how they roll south of the border.

maintaining

Weekends have become non existing or meaning less for me. The academy works harder on saturday than we do any other day of the week. weekends are cut a day short and one day of rest is taken by jumping on buses to see guatemala or spend the day curled up in bed.



Week nights are as good as night as any to go out since everday starts with class at 7am and ends at 8pm.



Tuesday nights at La playa. Enter at 815 to find your friend who got off early from work, doble tequila shot in hand ,´¨because he owed you one.¨Next, Four for One drink specials left us with a table of over 20 drinks for 5 people, mojitos, sexo en la playas, orgasmos were plentiful. Time for a stroll to the bathroom. Why not run into one of your students whome you find a little creepy in a macho latino ¨you´re the reason i speak english¨ sort of way, and get invited to double tequila shots, because they are two for one of course.

12am. Time to leave, you realize you didn´t eat dinner and you are starving. You force your sober guatemalteco amigo to drive past taco bell twice becuae you ´swear its open till at least 2am, maybe even four....then to wendy´s because you insist that they are ´open late.´No cigar. You are then explained to that everything closes at 11 ..and nothing is ´open late´cause people get shot here. oooh you say.

You then resort to heading to a gas station where you are presuaded to buy a large deep dish pizza and two liter of coke for Q60 and consume it in its interity with help of course.



530am come to early, and there is no goma yet...you give your 7 to 830 class with a shake in your stepp and little extra spice, and you even tell a student that speaks very little english that ergonomics wasn´t a word and didn´t exist...

t minus on month with these guys in this place. not enough to let them go by easybreasy beautiful covergirl.

AIESEC Gautemala

Enjoying

Yesterday i spent the day curled up in a cozy chair with a glass of red wine after picking up my pre ordered copy of harry potter at my favorite bookstore cafe downt he street.

Today i slept in, read for a couple of hours cozy in my bed with my typical guatemalan pants on (big baggy and colorful stripped which i will be wearing to class back in madison), took a nap, and am about to head back to my book.

Harry potter makes a weekend fabulous no matter where you are in the world.

Guatemala or Bust

They have no idea what awaits them as they are about to experience the wonder of Guate.

RANDOM odds and ends

Every two weeks at the Academy we change schedules. Classes, students, and teachers are shuffled to give everyone the opportunity to hear as many accents and expresions as possible.

What this means is everytwo weeks I have 5 goodbyes with 5 groups of people...each one showing thank you in their own special way. This friday, my 630-8pm class decided to leave class early with me and headover to Kluster. A fondue bar that has ´yards´ of beer. It reminded me of the essenhause a bit...except the yard of beer is all for you and you don´t have to pass it. Not sure if thats a good thing or a bad thing...

The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing and dinning in Zona Viva. Since i´ve moved i´ve felt like a city girl living in new york or something. I live in the heart of Guatemala City with marble sidewalks in a four block radius around me. Ritzy hotels, resturaunts and bars in everydirection...and work is one block away.

It is hard to beleive that 5 blocks east and one wrong turn in a car can bring you into a drastic change. Zone 3. There are hardly any street lights and the area is not just impoverished but dangerous. I got lost in zone three a few weekends ago and we were told that if it happens again we should roll down our car windows at stop lights so people can see your faces. Since everyone has severly tinted windows people have been killed randomly i guess...i still don't really understand.

Danger here is strange to me. Almost every person i know can tell you a personal story about encounters with corrupt police, robberies, murders and more. A student ofmine was absent last week because his boss's brother was murdered. And last week when i asked a friend if she wanted to walk wiht me to get coffee she said hes but hestiated...ever since she was robbed with gun to her face a block from work she's been nervous to walk.

I'm not sure why i'm writting this... i know my family will probably read this and become more nervous or friends might say what in the world katy..but its just something i'm observing here and trying to figure out. With election campaigns going on, i've been trying to understand the political sides and the history of guatemalan struggle and peace and its correlation with the heavy presence of gangs.... i don't know enough yet to make an educated post describing it..so for now i'm just relaying what i'm seeing.

On another note... a second wind has come into my lungs for trying to learn. My roomate and I went through the entire apartment today and post it noted everything in spanish/english. She is my english student so its helping both of us greatly. Now evertime i sit on the toliet i face a shelving unit filled with postits for "pasta de dientes" y "papel del bano". I spent the day today speaking spanish...i havent done that in a while....this week i'm starting 'leyendas de guatemala' for some freetime reading.

Trying to plan my next weekend with a little traveling...TINA is coming!! yaa axlds love

exhausted

7 weeks done, 7 weeks left.

I was asked today when i´m leaving because i have a good apartment and they are interested in renting it.

I was asked today how much time i have left in guate.

I had 4 for 1 cocktails last night at La playa with some friends...mojitos are my new drink of choice.

I was told today not to leave, in if i have to leave to bring them with me.

I was told today to come back to guatemala after Ecuador.

I got nervous as i opened an email about quito and school.

I was reminded today that in 7 weeks i have completly shut off my life here and turn on a life somewhere else. again.

I can´t think about leaving here, so i won´t ... for now.

My Traineeship Rocketship

slowly falling in love with this place...

un trip, hombre

Friday i walked to school in formal clothes with my hiking backpàck ready to rock. Skipping out ouf work early a friend and i headed for the bus station around noon on Friday. We jumped on a chicken bus (colorful painted school bus) and headed 4 hours out of the city to Lago de Atitlan.

I knew we were going to a special place when i looked out the window just 20 minutes out side of pana, the lakeside city, and saw a cascading waterful down the side of the mountain next to the highway.

Pablo and I wondered through the small touristy town of pana and hoped a small boat to cross the lake to the small hippie village of San Pedro. Within minutes of docking, we were offered pot and coke in the street by a barefoot man wiht dreads. ´no gracias´and i was on my way....

Walking along with our a man approached us and said, there is a great hotel just up the way...come with me. We followed him and found our hummble home for the weekend. A Q25 ($3) a night room with hot water and two beds with no sheets. Hell, for 25 Qs it would do, we decided. For dinner that night we feasted like a king, drinking Q15 liters of Gallo (guate beer) and full dinners of steak, tortillas, beans, and rice for Q20.

Saturday we at breakfast on the lake front with the view of the crystal blue water scattered with diamonds completely surrounded by towering green volcanos. After we ate we headed to the rocks and speading themorning diving into the lake with no bottom, into the water that makes your soul feel good when you are submerged.

An afternoon of meeting up with more friends and wandering san pedro was to follow. At the a large church on top of a hill, i asked a women washing clothes if we could go inside to see the beatiful view that the chruch gave to the lake on the other side. She told us to follow her as she let us not only inside, but up a flight of stairs. On the second floor she didn´t stop as she went out ouside onto a balcnony and continued to climb up more and more stairs in the back of the chruch until we were on the roof. Making a 360 you saw the entire village, the entire sparkling lake, volcanoes sourunding you all all four sides spotted with lake side villages in the distance.

Sunday was lazy and we walked the streets looking for cheap guate jade and beatiful woven fabrics. Im slowling blending into the chapina lifestyle as my arms are slowly becoming decorated with colorful woven bracelets and my daily vocabulary include 'a la gran...' (oh my goodness)

Calling it a weekend the now four of us head on a bus to los encentros, a highway intersection and the sight of a make shift town where hundreds of busses fly by into different directions in guate. Drunken men walked the streets at 2pm on a sunday withbottles of rum in their hand and hundreds of peeople, many in full woven mayan dress lined the road waiting for their bus. Everytime a bus would stop for guate (the capital and our destination) a hundred people would race to it and the bus would be gone within 20 seconds, with poeple hanging out the side and some people stillr unning to catch it.

After an hour of trying to get on a bus, we realized, no matter how full the next guate bus is, we HAVE to get on it if we dont´want to end up on the streets of this shanty town with the drunks tonight. The bus rolled up and we pushed our way through the line grabing on to any part of the metal bus that we could. Pulling ourselves on, we looked back into the school bus and saw every seat filled with 3 to FIVE people per seat, and the isle full of people standing. So there I stood for four hours smooshed between a short man who didn´t smile, and a women and her crying three month old.

another weekend for the books man, another for the books.

On another note, I moved today. My living situation just wasn´t working out, so now i´m living one block from my work, for cheaper rent and free internet with one of the girls i teach english to.

I´m just rolling with it.....

Happy fourth of July !!!!