cheers

hey beautiful people,

hope you are all enjoying a peaceful, snowy new year. similar to christmas, things are pretty different down here. theres currently a merengue band playing in the city center and a bunch of youth in costume dancing in the street. im about to go meet the rest of the family for a big dinner. i hope to work a little on my project tonight and speak to a few local musicians.

i went across the lake to a bigger city the other day to try to find someone to talk to about the music. i didnt think i would find anything but i happened to be pretty lucky and ask two random guys on the street if they knew where i could find someone to talk to. their neighbor is one of the biggest musicians in town and they took me to his house so we could talk for a while. afterwards, they led me to a sacred mayan house that contains one of their gods to which they frequently give gifts and light candles.

sorry that i dont have time to write much right now. im going to try to do another update before i hit the road. this week will be my last here in san pedro. ive decided to do a week on the road.

again, i hope you enjoy your new years. i know my sisters here will.

love and peace to all.

feliz navidad

hope you all have a peaceful, happy holidays up north.
ive been dreaming of a white christmas down here but dont know if ill have much luck.

look forward to seeing you all in the new year.
ill be thinking of you.
best

las felicidades

yesterday morning my family and i, as well as their cousins who live next door, woke up at 5 and walked across town with a myriad of instruments to play a sonata for their cousin who was turning 15. its typical to wake up the birthday girl early in the morning with a few songs played by family members. there were probably 10 of us and we played quite a few traditional songs. it was pretty fun. afterwards i had to skip breakfast to run back to the house to finish about an hours worth of homework before class started.

everyday about halfway through class we have a 20 minute break for coffe, tea, bread, etc. but yesterday about 5 students 5 teachers and i carried baskets full of food and other christmas gifts that the teachers had recently put together for poor families in the area. its amazing because in actuality, everyone in san pedro is poor, except for the tourists that is. i was talking to two guys on the rocks today at the water and they told me that the normal wage for most jobs in san pedro is about 30 quetzales per day, as they are not payed by hour. this works out to only 4 dollars, which is absolutely ridiculous. i couldnt figure out why shit is so cheap here and now i understand. everyone is pretty damn poor.

but anyway, we took these baskets that the teachers had so generously donated to some of the poorest families in the area. my teacher and i carried ours up the hill to an old family, to whom he gave his, and a family without a father, to whom i gave mine. it was a pretty shocking experience. i had obviously seen pictures of people living in extreme poverty before but never experienced it in real life. the mother was probably no more than 26 and had a few kids. they live in a house with a dirt floor and very very few possessions. it was obvious that they rarely got to each much so i was glad that the majority of the gifts were fruits and vegetables and pasta. when i gave her the basket, she thanked me and began speaking to my teacher in Tz´utujil, the mayan dialect spoken here. as she spoke her eyes welled up with tears. as they switched in between spanish and ts´utujil, i could tell that she was just thanking him and explaining her situation. i cant imagine how hard it must be for a single mother to feed herself and three kids on $4 a day. before we left, she gave me a hug and thanked me about 10 times. i have never seen someone so grateful for something so little. it really helps put a lot in perspective.

after we delivered the baskets, my teacher showed me his house and introduced me to his family. they were all wonderful and there was a great view from his roof. again, i was pretty surprised as to how the people here prioritize their possessions. they had a pretty large, new tv and cd player, but were also prety poor and didnt have any furniture in their living room nor a refrigerator.

later on i met up with marvin and fer, the two brothers that ive written about. we walked to the water and went swimming and then returned to my neighborhood to play som basketball. we had only been playing for about half and hour when a bunch of guys showed up and started a small soccer tournament. marvin, fer, and i joined two other dudes to form a team - there were 5 or 6 teams of 5 and we played for a couple of hours before we had to leave. afterwards we all went to the center of town because they had to play some music on a radio show. they invited me to play but i didnt know any of their songs and decided to help by holding microphones instead. at the end of their hour set the radioshow host asked if i wanted to say a few words and i nervously, and probably in absolutely awful spanish because i wasnt expecting it, wished listeners a merry christmas,explained why i am here, and talked a little about my friends music.

we all went out to dinner after the show and rode around town a bit on their motorcycle. it was a pretty damn good day.

today was great too. i woke up kind of early in the morning and met a couple other students and a teacher at the school to walk to the beach. we all rented kayaks, paid for by the school, and rowed about a mile down the lake to a beautiful beach. the water was amazing and a bunch of people were out swimming.

it took about 3 hours in total and by the time we got back i had to go to a family reunion lunch to celebrate an upcoming wedding. there were quite a few people there, all helping make some amazing food. i washed dishes and got to eat great guatemalan food for free. good deal.

i love this picture of this woman handing over a crab.

i went for another walk after lunch and returned to my favorite spot to read. i returned to the fiesta a few hours later for dinner, which was great. all of the women had spend all day making tamales. they were amazing. they also made this huge vat of a hot fruit drink traditionally made at christmas time. it had coconut, pineapple, melon, papaya, rum, etc., etc. my mother here is going to give me the recipe tomorrow becuase i told her i would love to make it when i get back. im sure it wont be as good as theirs, but ill try.

im having an amazing time here. i cant believe its already been a week. time passes much faster here - every day is tranquil and peaceful and they just fly by.

if i finished my studies and learned an adequate amount of spanish in three weeks, i was thinking about trying to go to cuba for a week but i checked the flights today and theyre all ridiculously expensive. oh well. maybe next time.

hope all is well up north. i think of you all constantly.

love and peace

what a night

fuck amoebas and bacterial water



and mosquitoes.

ahh globalization

so youd think that a village made up of 99% Mayan people, many who don´t even have running water, would lack many of the worlds products. but, alas, this is apparently not the case. it wasn´t as much of a surprise in the capitol, but here in San Pedro it was truly shocking. the Mayan family that im staying with cooks over a wood stove and washes all their clothes by hand but yet has a TV with cable and a cellphone. muy extraño. a couple of nights ago i was playing guitar and fooling around with my two new sisters and brother and they invited me to come inside to watch spongebob. hmmm...

youd be pretty surprised how many people have cell phones here. its kind of depressing. sure, i bet it helps them in some way, but i was really hoping to escape western civilization. unfortunately, im not sure if thats even really possible anymore.

the trash is also kind of depressing. after leaving the u.s. and thinking we were doing an awful job of being environmentally conscious, it was pretty surprising to see people throwing trash in this beautiful lake. i took a walk today to these small cliffs at the waters edge and was climbing the rocks and would find small deposits of trash every once and a while. when speaking with my teacher on the first day, i mentioned the trash in the lake. he said people like him were working hard to clean up the beaches in the streets when possible, but people just keep doing it. the main problem is that they just really dont know that its bad. i recommended an inconvenient truth. ha.

anyway, ive been hanging out with a couple young guatemaltecos - two brothers from another city that are here on vacation with their mom and sister for a year. theyre both pretty close to me in age and weve been playing basketball after my classes the last few days. yesterday we met up with another americano from michigan thats been living here for over 8 months and plays the banjo. we all went to the beach and played music for a few hours. it was pretty cool.

they asked me to join them in climbing the volcán today but i had class. afterwards i went exploring. there are some pretty amazing places here. as i said, i went to the rocks. i took some pictures on my way...

i tried to get a panoramic of the whole village, but not sure if itll work very well on here.

when i was climbing around on the rocks, i found a nice little spot to lie down on the left there. i read for a while but its such perfect siesta weather here that i didnt last very long.

not much more for now. i tried to upload more pictures but the internet is crapping out. ill try to get some more pictures of people but i feel weird popping my camera out and just snapping away. oh, i also finally got sick due to the water. i was wondering how long i would last and was actually surprised that i made it as long as i did. been feeling kind of shitty all day thanks to that. luckily madre y padre made me bring pepto bismol;) by the way guys, i saw it in a store last night. as i said, this world has become a little more western than you might imagine.

paz

bienvenidos a san pedro

yup, i made it.

i got up at 6 this morning and caught the bus that the women at the hostel recommended. it took me to chimaltenango in about 45 minutes and then i had to catch another to panajachel.

this is a picture i took just after stepping out onto the street from my hostel this morning and looking to the left. this city is beautiful and really, really old. it was built in 1500 and it shows. hope to see more of it later.

...and the other side of the street. its a horrible shot but thats a volcano in the background.

so anyway, on the bus to panajachel...i met another really awesome person. i sat next to and spoke to a woman and her little daughter for about two hours. she was really cool and i was able to learn a lot about the country. she also helped me find the docks when we arrived in panajachel. not sure if you can really tell from this shot but this was taken on the bus before arriving. its pretty impossible to capture the beauty of Lago Atitlan and the surrounding volcanoes with a tiny digital camera.

after taking this tiny boat across Lake Atitlan, i arrived in San Pedro around noon. i got ripped off by the dude who ran the ferry and tried to protest but he refused to give me money back. whatever. a nicer hombre showed me the way to the school, which would have been absolutely impossible for me to find on my own. the following pictures are of the view from the school and one of the ¨classrooms¨

once there i spoke with a teacher for a while until the 10-year old son of my host family and his 7-year old cousin came to pick me up. we walked back to the house and dropped off my stuff before walking the tiny streets of san pedro to find his parents at his grandma´s house. i had dinner there and spoke with my parents for quite a while. john was right - they´re so amazing. im really looking forward to getting to know them better.

i start class tomorrow at 8. really looking forward to meeting some other travelers my age. ive just been chilling by myself for the past 5 hours or so and its kind of lonely. i would have hung out with my host family but they´ve been in a conference at the church.

here are a few more pictures to hold you over - another shot of the lake and my home for the next month. thats their only sink, in the yard, if you were wondering. my room´s the farthest to the left thats not visible.

hope you´re all staying warm. keep in touch.

love and peace

estoy aqui

hola
well, im finally here. after about 13 hours in planes and airports, it was great to finally set foot on solid ground. i was hoping to get to guatemala city before dark so i woulnt have any trouble finding the bus stop, but that definitely didnt work out in my favor. my plane arrived just at nightfall and when i got out of the airport, the surroundings were really nothing like i was expecting from reading the travel guide.

i was planning on taking a city bus to a certain stop and walking a few blocks until i found the next bus stop that would take me to antigua, but after speaking with a local at the bus stop, i learned that that plan would have put me in a completely wrong place. luckily, all the men at the stop were very nice and helped me out. i took a small shuttle into a very crowded part of the downtown district of the capital and got out to find myself surrounded by street vendors, loud latino music, and really awful traffic. people just kind of walk when and wherever they want here. another nice dude was kind enough to escort me to the correct bus stop after getting out of the shuttle. it was about 300 yards from where i got out and i most definitely would not have been able to find it without his help. so that was pretty lucky

so then i got on this reallllly cramped old school bus that literally had about 6 inches of aisle space in between the seats. as we made our way to antigua, which took about an hour, a really cool couple sat next to me and talked about random shit for most of the drive. the man, antonio, then helped me to find my way upon arriving in antigua.

ive been at the hostel for a couple hours now and am about to pass out. its pretty cool here. its totally geared for traveling youth - there are a bunch of hammocks in an open-air part of the lobby and some great food. after speaking with the owner, i learned my plans for traveling to san pedro tomorrow were also pretty fucked. turns out i was supposed to book a reservation for the bus but its too late now. so im gonna wake up around 6 and try a different route that she recommended. hopefully i can get a seat...

ill try to upload some pictures tomorrow of the hostel and some of my travels. if i make it to san pedro...

hope all is well up north. miss you all.

saludos

last day

so this is my last day in ithaca for a while. theres finally snow, on the day before i leave. i'm really hoping it doesn't fuck with my flight. i have the worst luck with snow and flights. i think ive had problems every single time ive tried to fly in the winter. 

anyway, i'm off to guatemala tomorrow morning.  i should be arriving in Guatemala City by around 7 pm eastern time.  at that point ill have to catch a two-hour bus to Antigua where ill crash for the night.  im staying at a cheap hostel, which should prove to be quite interesting.  ill try to get in touch with you all at that point.  then sunday morning i catch a 7am bus to Panajachel where i board a ferry that will take me across Lake Atitlan to San Pedro La Laguna.  apparently there are a few internet cafes there so im hoping ill be able to upload pictures and update with new posts throughout my trip.  feel free to leave comments - ill do my best to keep in touch.

love and peace