Week 1: Thank the rabbit and give him a carrot, son!

Hola desde Xela, Guatemala!

After nearly 6 months of planning and anticipation, we are finally here in beautiful Quetzaltenango, commonly known as Xela (¨shay-la¨), located in the western highlands of Guatemala (or ¨Guatermaler¨ as we lovingly refer to it with certain friends I miss very much)!

Over the next 8 months I hope to keep this blog updated with our most recent adventures and misadventures. Bryce will add his 2 cents when he´s not otherwise occupied searching for coco seco (the fruit of the coconut that was commonly found in the Dominican Republic but that Bryce is determined to find here as well) or drinking Gallo, a Guatemlan beer brewed here in Xela that is actually tasty.

Misadventure No. 1 : Getting to Guatermaler!

We arrived at National Airport at 4:oo am and boarded a flight to Houston at 6:00 am. Due to bad weather and our plane stopping in Corpus Christi to refuel, we missed our connecting flight and were stranded in Texas of all places for the subsequent 8 hours, having only slept a couple hours the night before. We slept on the airport floor and spent an absurd amount of money on airport food, including dinner at Pappasito´s Cantina...mmmm, ironic, right?

Every travel book we´ve read and every piece of advice we´ve heard from travelers advised us (a) not to stay in Guatemala City longer than it takes to board a bus out of town and (b) not to arrive in Guatemala City at night. Well, thanks to weather and Continental Airlines, we were now scheduled to arrive in Guatemla City at 9pm and would have to stay overnight, which was great for my already high level of anxiety (poor Bryce). My dad (my hero) managed to reserve a room for us at Patrcia´s B&B near the airport, which included transportation from the airport to the hotel and from the hotel to the bus station the next morning. We were very relieved to have that arranged, and it worked out flawlessly, except for a minor incident in which I was very slightly electrocuted twice in the shower while trying to use the hot water heater.

We boarded a bus to Xela the next morning about 60 seconds before it left the station...phew! Otherwise we might have spent another day at Patricia´s B&B, no offense to Patricia...the place was very comfortable and safe. Just be sure to interpret the phrase ¨bed and breakfast¨ quite literally here or you might find yourself imagining the quaint establishment I was imagining while stranded in Texas.

Stupid American Moment 1 & The Amazing Bus Ride Across Guatermaler

So we boarded the bus (not a chicken bus yet) and took seats next to each other toward the back. Within a couple minutes a Guatemalan man approached me saying something to the effect of, ¨What is your number?¨. I immediately thought to myself, oh no. he´s trying to give me his number. I knew it would be bad, but not this bad. What to do? Pretend to look confused. Somewhere along the line, as he pointed at his ticket and said something about his number, I realized this man was not so much enamored by me as he was pissed at me. I was blushing, as I usually do in this sort of awkward situation. oh shit. I´m sitting in his seat number. He´s asking me for my seat number not my phone number. shit. I am a stupid American. Bryce and I moved quickly to the seat furthest back on the bus, directly over the very hot engine....where stupid Americans belong, and remained there for the next 4 to 5 hours, admiring the natural beauty and how the vegetation changed as our altitude increased (Xela is 7, 795 ft. above sea level). I took off my boots on the bus to be more comfortable. My feet were burning up in my wool socks so I took them off too. Then I realized it wasn´t my socks that were making me hot. The floor of the bus was about 125 degrees from the heat of the engine. Every so often the driver would get off the bus just to check the tires. The road was windy and steep. We passed slower busses, risking head-on collisions with other busses and large trucks coming down the moutains. We bounced high into the air every time the bus hit a bump. It was the most fun I´ve had in a long time. Most of all...it was beautiful. So lush and green. Wildflowers everywhere. Steep green mountains. Indigenous farmers and small villages. We arrived in Xela in the late afternoon, without much rain yet (It´s still the rainy season for another 3 weeks). We loaded our 20 some suitcases into the trunk of a cab and arrived a few minutes later at the cheapest hostel in town, Casa Argentina.

Casa Argentina: Home for a week!

Casa Argentina is run by a very friendly and smiley local woman. She lives on the first floor with her family. The Casa is basically a hippy commune full of 20-something travelers (or the occasioanal 60-something) from all over the US, Europe, Canada, Australia, and the Republic of Vermont! (to name a few nationalities we´ve met thus far). Some longer-term volunteers or just people studying Spanish for a while, live here as well. We share a room on the top floor which looks out over the tin and adobe rooftops of the city. We can see all the church facades and rotundas in the distance. Great views of the mountains and volcanos. All for $5 a night (that´s $2.50 each)! Our room, inexplicably, has Spanish vocabulary flash cards taped to the wall which is neat. Some previous guest added a sense of humor to the set of flash cards by adding one of his own. Puta Madre does not mean Thank the rabbit and give him a carrot, son! But if some crazy hippy didn´t speak Spanish very well and found himself needing to use the phrase,¨Thank the rabbit and give him a carrot, son!¨, he would find himself in a very unfortunate situation thanks to whoever posted that flash card on the wall. Meals are not included at Casa Argentina so we´ve had a chance to try some delicious local food and even cooked ourselves a meal in Casa Argentina´s kitchen last night! See our cute little room below:

Stupid American Moment 2 & The Tortillarilla:

Things that are wrapped in corn husks are not always tamales as we think of them in the US. I asked a girl at the market what type of tamale she was selling. ¨Queso¨ she replied. She was right. I did indeed buy 2 pounds of local cheese wrapped in a corn husk. This isn´t like cheddar jack or american cheese. It´s a strange sort of white spongy substance, that when heated with delicious veggies tastes not unlike tofu or some other sort of meat substitute one could purchase at Juice Joint or (insert hippy town restaurant of choice here). I know this because Bryce and I cooked it with veggies and garlic for dinner last night. It was delicious and a very cheap dinner. We´ve also eaten some delicious black beans and corn tortillas. There is a tortillarilla across the street from Casa Argentina where 2 young Guatemalan women make fresh corn tortillas over what we think is a gas burning stove. They are very friendly and at first mistook Bryce and I for hermanos (siblings). When they found out we are a pareja (a couple) they demanded that we baile (dance) right then and there. They had music playing on the boombox and it was kind of romantic and stuff so we danced, awkwardly and a little embarassed. Now everytime we go back they tell us to baile! baile!. They are ridiculously charming which make the tortillas taste even better.

Settling into a Routine...

We haven´t yet. After visiting the clinic for a couple hours on Thursday it became clear that we need to spend most of our time learning the national language, which is Spanish...and we need to do so quickly. You would think this reality might have hit us oh...6 months ago when we planned a trip to a Spanish speaking country but that was just one detail among many, such as buying cool backpacks and outdoor gear. Bryce was informed that he will be one of 4 new managers of Primeros Pasos clinic now that the director is leaving in November. Wait...What? Jess is leaving? The only person who we have communicated with about the clinic for that past 6 months? The woman who runs the show and has run the show for 3 out of the 4 years the clinic has existed? The one who has gained the steady trust of the community and speaks fluent English and Spanish and is from Guatemala and so knows the culture of the clients better than anyone else who works there? She´s leaving? Yep. She´s leaving...soon. She has put her heart and soul into the clinic for the past 3 years and is ready to move on to other things such as a public health degree in the States. She is an amazing person and I´m glad we at least have the next 2 months with her as we get oriented at the clinic.

School just let out for the next 3 months so the clinic (being mostly a pediatric clinic that works directly with the schools) is not very busy. They do take walk-ins during this time but Bryce and I have been asked to focus on learning Spanish so that we can be useful starting in January when things get busy again. We will go to the clinic twice a week in the mornings for the next couple months and then start going everyday in January. Bryce will be the ¨clinic manager¨ in charge of the daily logistics that go into operating the clinic. It is my understanding that I will be a health educator, traveling (sometimes hiking up mountains?) to schools in the valley, where I will talk to children in Spanish ...about health...and then it is my understanding that I will answer their questions... about health...in Spanish. All of this is quite an incentive to learn to speak Spanish better than we do now. It´s also an incentive for me to learn about health issues facing rural children in Guatemala. I´m told there is a curriculum binder that I should start reading. It´s in Spanish.

Spanish: It´s good to speak it when you live in Guatermaler

Yeeeeeeeah. So we didn´t actually budget for Spanish classes, we thought we´d just kind of learn it by being here and talking to people on the street I guess. But Bryce is getting a small stipend for his position that he has generously offered to split with me so that we can both attend Spanish school. Jess also got us a big discount at La Paz Spanish school. We start Monday. We will get 25 hours/week of 1:1 Spanish instruction as well as a home stay and 3 meals a day, ALL for $100 a week. We plan to take classes for the next 2 months.

Elizabeth (a UVA graduate who is the fundraising coordinator for the clinic) took us around to 4 different Spanish schools on Thursday, all of which give a portion of their profit to the clinic. Xela is known across Central America for it´s language schools and there are probably 40 or more in the city. We met with directors and teachers and she helped translate our questions and their answers. We ended up choosing La Paz, the cheapest of the 4 options and probably the cheapest in the whole city. We´ve heard the teachers rotate between all the schools and so the teaching quality is pretty much the same wherever you go. You´re paying mostly for atmosphere and as far as I´m concerned La Paz has one of the best atmospheres we could hope for...

The school is located on a very steep cobblestone side street and has a quiet patio that overlooks the city, with stunning views of the mountains and volcanos (see photo below). The director, Doris, is very sweet. La Paz is very small and off the beaten path so most tourists don´t know about it. There are only 6 students studying there right now, including Bryce and I. The teachers and the director meet with the students on Mondays to discuss a schedule of after-school activities for the week. We can go hiking or to the hot springs or the beach. We can cook dinner together or watch a Spanish movie. All the activities serve as a way to get to know the country and practice our conversation skills in Spanish with the teachers and other students. We can take books home from the school´s library and we will get LOTS of homework to practice in addition to our class time.

Our Home Stay: Coming Soon!

We move in to our home stay Monday, which was arranged by La Paz (the Spanish school). We will live in a big house (near Casa Argentina, where we are right now) with a woman and her 2 daughters. Sadly, the husband passed away two weeks ago. Apparently the woman is a very good cook and happily accomodates vegetarians, which we usually try to be. The family rents multiple rooms so we will be living with a couple other travelers. One is a student at La Paz, a woman about my age from Canada who is super friendly and will be here for the next 2 months volunteering at Guatemala´s only women´s shelter. Needless to say she is awesome. The other occupant is a 60-something man who we will meet upon moving in. We can´t wait to unpack our stuff and get settled into a routine.


We love it here. We miss you all so much, though! Please keep us updated on your lives! More soonish...