Hey Everyone. Pat and Alyssa here for your 10th (yes, that�s right, TENTH!) Guatemalan update. Hard to believe that we�ve been here that long, eh? Yes, we�re still definitely enjoying ourselves and working hard. Please send money. JUST KIDDING! We have enough to get us through! :-) We can�t believe how little time we have left and will try to travel as much as possible from here on out.
We have a new housemate who is from Michigan. His name is Jason, and he�s planning on staying at our house until about the same time we leave. He is taking Spanish classes right now, and after about 2 months of that he will be doing missionary work in a smaller town in Guatemala about 4 hours away called Zacapa. He�s fairly young (a recent high school graduate) and excited and seems like an awesome housemate to have around.
This past week at the project Pat has been continuing teaching English to the first graders, which he really enjoys. Starting next week he�ll be doing the kindergarteners too, who are pretty much learning the same things. Alyssa has continued her cooking class and girls group, both of which are going well. Her English class is a challenge, but she is learning how to teach and enjoying it. We both will begin teaching the adult teacher English class, which our teacher friends are in. We sat in on it today, and it seems like fun. Alyssa is also helping the administration create a program that will help prevent teenage pregnancy, help self-esteem, and address family issues and discipline in the home. After all her time at Programa Hispano, she feels right at home.
This last weekend we were planning to go to a place called Xela (pronounced �Shayla�), which is the second biggest city in Guatemala, and is beautiful and filled with lots of history. We packed our bags and headed out Saturday morning on the chicken bus. On the bus we met 2 fellow young people from Canada who were headed to Panajachel, which is a town on Lake Atitlan. We realized that we REALLY wanted to see Lake Atitlan, so we completely changed our trip and went to the lake. We weren�t disappointed.
When we got there around noon, we found a hotel room for Q55 (about $7.00) and grabbed some lunch. After that we explored the town and saw the lake. We were tired and ended up going to bed early planning on getting up early to see the sunrise, but Pat ended up throwing up in the middle of the night. Nevertheless, we weren�t going to miss out on our only opportunity to explore the lake. We took a boat tour of the lake that lasted from 9:30 to 3:30, and we got to see three other towns on various sides of the lake. It was about an hour boat ride between each town, so we were left with about an hour in each town. The first was a small town called San Pedro and is known for all the hippies that go there. We went on a fairly long walk through the town, and only counted about 15 cars. If you are lucky enough to find a road wide enough for a car, it looked like you needed 4-wheel drive. It is definitely a walking town. The second was a little bigger town called Santiago. They were hit pretty bad with the mudslides, and are very close to Panabaj, which is the town that was completely destroyed by the mud. We acted like typical tourists and went to see Maximon, which is a Guatemalan god mixed with the Catholic Saint Simon. He is always depicted as sitting in a chair smoking a cigar, and they�re about as reverent around him as they are in church! The Tz�utujil Mayans that live there totally adore him and believe that he brings them luck. The last town we saw was San Antonio, which is very small and built on a very steep hill. Again, a car doesn�t help you here because there are almost no roads. It is not very touristy and not much to do, so we mostly ended up people watching . . . the Mayan women there wore beautiful blue woven shirts and there were some little kids playing by the dock. After that, we headed home to Antigua. On the way back we had to take a different road because the one we had gotten there on was impassable. We passed by lots of areas seriously hurt by the mudslides, and it was amazing to see the damage done and how widespread it was in the area because of the steep terrain. So basically it was a very productive 1.5 day trip because we explored the towns around the lake and got to see some of the effects of hurricane Stan. And now, the pictures:
Lake Atitlan Sunday morning
The boat driver. Bryan will appreciate this: Very old boat, but with new CD player and very large speaker directly in front of him. And of course, he�s driving with his foot :-)
The town of Santiago . . . you can barely make out a mudslide in the middle of the picture just above the town
Maximon
San Antonio
Alyssa with a local Mayan
The boat ride
Still on the boat ride
Where the Panajachel River flows into the lake . . . there used to be a bridge across it, but now all you can see of it is the remains on the right side.
This building is just above the Panajachel River and is completely surrounded by mud but was somehow untouched. Someone had spray painted on the wall in English: �Island in Paradise. Thank you Stan.�
The Panajachel River
The ride home . . . it used to be a two lane road. This doesn�t do the scenery justice�it was catastrophic (and reaaaallly freaked out the lady behind us!)
A side of this slope was almost completely washed away. The road we drove on goes through the center of the photo.
We didn�t have our camera handy when we took the �Mirador tour�, which is the weekly tour Camino Seguro offers to see what goes on inside the dump, so we sent our camera along with our friend Alycia and she took these pictures for us. They show what we described what work is like for the parents/families of our students everyday.
A view of the dump with the vultures overhead
The huge pile of garbage - this is only part of one of 3 levels.
People gathering around the new trucks to get first pick of the garbage
