Las Ninas

As we´ve mentioned when talking about San Pedro, people are quite friendly. Most friendly and most interested in us seem to be the little girls. Upon passing us in the street, they give us coquettish looks with downturned eyes and small shy smiles. Not so shy are the sweet girls who live on our street close to our family´s house. Soon after arriving, they waved our way, called out Buenos Dias, and the words they knew in english. Before we knew it, they scampered into the yard to ask us questions, hold our hands, suggest games we could play together. We obliged that evening and then every time thereafter that we left the house, the young girls would run up to us with hugs and kisses. This week, we´ve learned some of their games like La Ronda, which seems similar to Ring Around the Rosie and Campanita, which is like London Bridge is Falling Down. We taught them Duck Duck Goose (Pato Pato Gonzo in spanish) and some of Jen´s swing dance moves.
More to say but for now we´ll leave it with a few photos...

Santiago Atitlan

On Sunday, we took a boat across the the lake to Santiago where we visited two places. The first is a large, beautiful centuries-old church. At the back of the church is a memorial to a missionary priest from Oklahoma and local people murdered by death squads in the early 80´s during Guatemala´s civil war. As our spanish teachers shared with us, the government has a scorched earth policy that resulted in many murders and exterminations of entire villages throught the countryside. The president, an evangelical Christian, killed and tortured many indigenous people. He was deposed in ´83 but violence continued until the peace accords were signed in 1996. It was quite disturbing to hear my teacher´s personal experiences and family tragedies that had occurred so recently especially because how little I remembered being this conflict being discussed in the US.



We also viewed Maximon - a saint or deity revered throughout Guatemala. In Santiago, he, in the form of a wooden statue, resides in different homes with a caretaker where he recieves offerings of money, rum, cigars, and Coca-Cola.

More to say about all of this but it will have to be later.

P.S. We´ve also added some photos to our previous posts below...

San Pedro, Guatemala

We arrived in San Pedro La Laguna, a pueblo of 10,000 on the shores of Lake Atitlan, last Saturday. The lake and small towns sitting on its shores and tucked high on its verdant volcanos and hills are indescribably beautiful. Puffs of clouds and sheets of mist float over the lake, which stretches about 4x12 miles, and collect in the hills.


More than any other country in Central America, Guatemala's indigineous population and culture have persisted. Depending who you talk to, 50 to 75% of the country's population is of Mayan descent. We were happy to leave the tourist heavy city of Antigua for this small town in the Western Highlands where the traditional language, culture, dress, and way of life continue. While there is less U.S. influence at Lago de Atitlan, it is also interesting to see how cell phones, the internet, and Frosted Flakes have been incorporated into a way of life which otherwise is similar to that of perhaps 50 to 100 years ago.
In San Pedro, we have been staying with a family, Rosa and Domingo Garcia Roja and 4 of their 5 kids. From their hammock we have a spectacular view of the lake and Volcano San Pedro as well as the flowers, avocado trees, and chickens in their yard. Our room is simple and illuminated by a fluorescent light but we spend little time there. Probably the best thing about staying with the Garcia Rojas is Dona Rosa's delicious cooking. Every day we are treated to 3 fabulous meals which always include fresh homemade tortillas. The poor woman spends hours every day making them. We tried our hand at it but were not much help...it's a lot harder than it looks. Jen's Spanish teacher teased her saying that she must be a man because only men can't make tortillas. (Girls start learning at the age of 7 or 8.) More on the sexism and strict gender roles another day perhaps...

Rosa in the family´s yard


This week we attended Spanish classes at a school called Corazon Maya (which arranged our homestay). We both had 4 hours of one on one instruction every morning. Our Spanglish is much improved! In the afternoons, we did our homework, attempted to do our laundry (by hand of course) to the liking of our hostess, showered once or twice (better to take a cold shower in the heat of the day than the cool of the evening...& of course the water could be gone by evening!), played with the kids on "our" "street", visited another town on the lake, and spent several hours volunteering at a center for special needs kids.

Our "classrooms"

Servas Serves Us

As some of you have heard, we just joined Servas. This organization, established after WWII to promote peace and understanding, is a network of travellers and hosts located around the world. Our first Servas host was Deet, an insanely energetic ex-Chicagoan who has made Antigua her home for the last 13 of her 67 years. As fate would have it, we showed up on her doorstep at nearly the same time as Servas member Alissa who lives on 15th Ave in Seattle. Small world. Deet also introduced us to a Servas family visiting from Belgium--Jan and his two daughters, Sarah and Maruka, adopted from Guatemala over 25 years ago. All muy sympaticos! Deet led us on her insider's tour of Antigua Wednesday. The pace of the tour was such that the 2 of us caffeine-addicted Seattlites had to stop for coffee (though some of the world's best coffee is grown here, almost all is exported - coffeeshops are for foreigners.)

At lunch with Deet and Alissa

Yesterday we all met up again to visit Familias de Esperanza located about 2 kilometers outside of Antigua. Familias de Esperanza (www. commonhope.org), established in 1986 by Minnesotans, works to support poor Guatemalan families through education, healthcare, and housing. Guatemala only provides education through 6th grade and because the vast majority of Guatemalans are poor, most people end their education then. This organization provides funding for about 4,000 students and supports their families through social services and job training. We were very impressed with what they are accomplishing and encourage you to consider sponsoring a student or making a donation.

Onsite at Familias de Esperanza


Already in our short time here, we have had many more experiences than we can describe in these brief paragraphs -- eating tortillas hot off the griddle and an entire sweet dripping pineapple, walking by church ruins from the 1773 earthquake, and seeing the extent to which Antigua is a direct descendant of Spanish colonists, from the architecture to the people.

We are trying to transition into a mindset that will allow us to take in many new thoughts and experiences over our seven months.

Tomorrow we're headed to Lake Atitlan to study Spanish...

p.s. We will try to post photos when we can but it will not be as often as we'd like.

Beginning in Guatemala

It is Friday and we have been in Antigua, Guatemala since Tuesday afternoon. On the plane neither of us could believe we were about to land in Guatemala City (watching March of the Penguins on route did not help) but the indigenous people dressed in traditional garb, plethora of little kids wanting to shine our shoes or sell us gum, and balmy temperature helped bring us to our senses, literally.



An hour later we arrived in the gringo-laden cobblestoned streets of the colonial city of Antigua to find that since we'd made our internet reservations for Hotel de Casa de Leon, its name had changed to Ummagumma Bed and Breakfast Hotel (no breakfast included this week). The new owner is a very handsome 23 year old Guatemalan man named Saul. At this terrific hotel, we've also met Odillia Shoc, a beautiful young Mayan woman who travels two hours from her village everyday to clean the hotel; Wagnerio, a Guatemalan website designer working in Guatemalan City; and Eddie from Costa Rica whose favorite drink is callemocho (wine mixed with Coke!). Besides all these amazing people, the hotel's best feature is the flower-filled rooftop terrace with 360-degreee views of the surrounding village rooftops and three stunning volcanoes (Agua, Fuego, Pacaya).

Here is a sunset view from the terrace

Leaving Seattle

here's what we'll be missing...



Updates coming soon...