Colegio Mesoamericano Patzicia

Well, here it is. The school I've been working at this past month. It's truly a wonderful place. It's been a great experience working there!
The sports court where they do PE and where everyone hangs out during lunch and after school. The sports court is brand new! It was an eagle scout project from someone in the states. The students are so grateful for it. They're favorite sport to play is soccer. It's so cute, the little ones from kindergarten play too.
The playground. In the right hand corner is the comedor-a place they are building where the kids can eat lunch. Also it will be a place where they can sell lunch food for the kids. Right now they sell out of a little shack. It will be done soon so everyone is really excited.
This is the classroom I work in. I teach 3rd through 9th grade. We go to the classrooms of 3rd, 4th, and 5th. And then 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th come to us in this classroom. 7th grade is obviously the hardest. I give so much credit to middle school teachers - they are all truly awesome. I really learned to love that class though. They are a lot of fun to hang out with and are actually really willing to learn even though in class they don't act like it sometimes. View of Patzi from our school.
This is my electivos group. Some of my favorite kids - mostly 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. This is the last class of the day called electivos after all their academic classes where we play games practicing their English.
My last day at school. These are the crazy 8th and 9th graders. They're fun.This is Frank and Anne. The two teachers I worked with in teaching classes. I learned so much about lesson planning, controlling classes, and being a teacher from them. I really enjoyed working with them.
This is Mirium. As you can see she is an absolute doll. She is the lunch couple's daughter and also one of our neighbors at home. We love their family. The food is amazing that they cook for the school!
This is Carlos the PE teacher. He is probably one of the best PE teachers I've ever met too. He's only 19 and so good with the kids. He does a great job. When I had a minute I loved helping out in PE! I even got to teach a little gymnastics and soccer! It was fun leading exercises too.

Overall, my experience at the school was absolutely amazing. I learned so much about teaching, about the kids, about the people I worked with, and about myself. While teaching English I also learned more Spanish. I know that when I teach ESL students in the future I will have a little more background to help them than I had before. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to have worked at the school - I am glad to have been able to help them any way I could. This is the reason I came here and it has definitely proven worth while. Seeing their faces in the classrooms and being able to help teach them made every minute of the trip worth it.

La Casa de Las Voluntarias

Our bathroom. We get it as clean as we possibly can. But it still looks like this. Oh well. Makes us all really grateful for our clean bathrooms at home. And after a week of living in the house we figured out how to make the shower warm! So we do get warm showers :)
Me and Jenna's room. I sleep on the top. Down below is our dresser drawers (aka our suitcases) It's cozy. I sleep like a rock at night because we are always so busy.
This is where the other 3 girls sleep. This is also the room where when it rains the water likes to leak on their floor - sweeping it out gets it out though. The stuff on the left bed is all donation stuff we are organizing and giving out to the families we know that need things.

These hammacks are like heaven. we love them.
The firepit in our backyard.
This is the first room seen when entering the house. This is where we all like to hang out. Where the kids color, watch movies, practice schoolwork, ect. It is also where our guests sleep.

Our little kitchen. On the other wall is a shelf where we keep our food.

Lawn Mower? What's that?
When your grass needs to be cut in Guatemala a Machete gets the job done.

The wonderful girls I have lived with: Anne, Jenna, Taryn, Kiley, & Me.

We have had a blast together! Right now its just me and Jenna because the other girls went to Panama - we miss them already!

When volunteering at the school this is our home away from home.

(I made a video tour but it won't upload - you all will have to see it when I get home)

A weekend in Antigua & hitchhiking in the rain = good times

I can´t even begin to explain how exciting it was to see this blue sky! First time in 10 days!

The two above pictures explain the chicken bus experience. Check out our faces.
That´s a picture of our bus and the road next to our bus. The flood was further ahead.
Anne, Taryn, Leah, Megan, Jenna, Me, & Kylie
I´m going to miss her!
Our BYU friends.
The McDonalds park where we got to lay out. Here are the Holland kids.
I´m a fan of McDonalds here.

The cookies Anne made.
This is Mario, he lives next door and he is my favorite 3 year old here.
haha the million kids hanging out at our house.

Kiley, Anne, and Taryn leave this week from us to go travel to other countries and then head back to the states. We couldn’t think of a better way to spend their last weekend in Guatemala then heading down to Antigua for a good time. Antigua is the beautiful city where I spent my first week here in Guatemala. We packed up after school and headed on a chicken bus to this Spanish colonial city to spend the night.

We a dropped our stuff off at our 5 dollar a night hotel and got ready for dinner. Our friends Leah and Megan from our sister school, Momostenango, were also with us because of an English meeting in the school earlier that day. We all got dolled up and went to dinner at this place called the Rainbow Café. This place had awesome food and awesome live music. I ate a salad! My first one in a whole month! It was pretty amazing to have vegetables! For those of you who know me know how much I love salad – it’s one thing I really miss from the states. Leah and Kiley gave the mic a try and sang a couple songs using the guitars. Kiley had met some BYU boys who were here doing research, so they ate with us as well. It was a good time. Then we met some of our fellow teachers from the school for a night of dancing. Francis, Dorge, Odien, and a couple of their friends met up with us to go to a salsa club. It was SUCH A BLAST just hanging out with all the friends I’ve met here. I’m really going to miss the girls that are leaving!

The next day I woke up and went and got some banana bread and cheese (two things that don’t exist in Patzicia) from my favorite bakery in Antigua to take home. I also got a couple souvenirs and then all of us girls met back up. We decided to stop by McDonalds before we headed out. McDonalds is one of the nicest restaurants in town because it is ALWAYS so clean. A clean bathroom is a rare find here in Guatemala. It was also kind of nice to have American food for once too – it feels like it’s been a long time. This McDonalds also had a little garden in the middle (like most buildings in Antigua) for us to eat in. The sun came out! We laid out in this little garden for about 3 hours just soaking up the sun that had been hidden for over a week. I even got a little sunburn! It was pretty exciting. This Holland woman also had us watch her kids for her because she was pick pocketed right then in the McDonalds – even with the security. After going on the internet (which was fast by the way J) we were back on those chicken buses again.

Like I’ve said before, riding a chicken bus in Guatemala is an adventure in itself. They are the cheapest and easiest way to travel in Guatemala but they definitely are not the most comfortable. They are called chicken buses for the reason that they literally try to fit as many people as they can on these monster things. If you were claustrophobic you definitely couldn’t travel this way – at least 3 people to a seat, people standing, and people practically sitting on you. Then just when you think they couldn’t fit more on there, the doors open and more pack on in. A man called an audante pushes through the people to collect how much they decide to charge that time. Smells of goods and the body odor of cramped people fill your senses. Add a crazy driver driving like a maniac in the hurricane rain on windy roads. THEN add jumping off the bus while it’s still moving – all this creates an experience never forgotten. When riding these buses you have to be careful of pick pocketers! Taryn got her pocket of her shorts cut and her wallet was stolen. It’s so cramped and there are so many people touching you it’s so hard to notice. On our last bus ride she had to call her bank to cancel her card immediately –big bummer.

Our goal was to head over on a bus to Acatenango to a fair to meet the teachers from our school. They were going to drive us home when it got dark because it’s not safe to ride the buses at night. We left in plenty of time to get there, but of course it started raining which slowed everything down. We were about 2 miles from the town and all traffic stops. The driver and the audante get out of the bus to see what’s up – FLOOD. No one can pass. So we just sit there as it gets darker and darker. We’re in the mountains where Guatemalan gangs live just sitting on the bus waiting to get robbed. There’s no way that the traffic is going to be moving and there is also no way our friends are going to be able to meet us. The audante owed Kylie 45Q for her change on the bus so we waited for that until we realized we had to get out of there unless we wanted to spend the night on this bus. So in the torrential downpour rain all 5 of us girls (Me, Jenna, Taryn, Kylie, and Anne) start walking the other way down the road. The town we were 2 miles away from had no hotel or a place for us to stay – plus we probably wouldn’t have been able to get passed that flood anyway. Then we see this truck going the other way and Kylie asks if we could have a ride. Yikes.

So there we all were, in the back of this truck in the pouring rain on our way back to Patzicia which we thought was about 30 minutes away. That was another problema, we weren’t really sure where we were. We sat there drenched terrified thinking of all the million outcomes of the situation. And really we had no other option at the time – it was a bad situation that had turned a lot worse. These guys could have pretty much taken us wherever they wanted; done whatever they wanted to us. We didn’t know where we were and said a prayer that we would just make it back safe. We sat in this truck in high alert ready to jump out if they went off onto a different road. Anne watched to make sure they didn’t go on their phones to call their friends. I watched the road to make sure they stayed on the main road. And we all sat there very scared driving on these windy mountain roads and being scared or angry with each other would get us nowhere. After about a half an hour we were back on the other side of Patzicia. Oh the relief we felt to stop in our town. Then we walked over a mile home still in the pouring rain along the side of a highway. When planning my trip to Guatemala I wasn’t aware I was going to have to plan for hyperthermia haha. We had been soaking wet in cold mountain temperatures for at least 3 hours. We got back and did everything we could to get warm – BLAST this darn rain that NEVER ends. I was so happy we were all safe. By far the scariest experience I’ve had so far in Guatemala.

Sunday was pretty mellow compared to Saturday. We went to church and then had the kids in the neighborhood over to play. We must have had at least 25 kids over. They love watching movies on my laptop (we borrow kiddy movies from our director Denise). We also play games and do art stuff with them. They also help me practice my Spanish and I help them with their English. Anne made homemade peanut butter cookies that were simply amazing! The kids loved those!
So there you go - my first hitchhiking experience. Can you believe I’ve lived in Guatemala for over a month now? Crazy huh? It’s been a little tough but yet completely wonderful. Never a dull moment here. I will see you all in less than 3 weeks!

Tikal

If you visit Guatemala you can’t leave without visiting the ancient Mayan ruins of Tikal - so when Jenna and I heard a group was heading north to go we jumped on the bandwagon so fast.

Tikal is about a 10 hour drive from where we live without stops, so heading there in a Chicken bus for that long would be a very bad idea. It was important for us to go with a group because it meant the van there would be cheaper and we would be safer with more people. Traveling in Guatemala always means a huge adventure. Our group consisted of 3 girls from BYU, this young married couple, and then me and Jenna – 7 of us total plus our driver Salvador.

At that time I’d been in Guatemala for over 3 weeks without getting sick from anything I had eaten (and the only one living in our little house at that time that hadn’t gotten sick yet). OF COURSE I had to get sick as soon as we started this long journey up north. The worst stomach pain of my life and there I was in this HOT van on the windy mountains roads of Guatemala for 12 hour ride (I swear Guatemalans make these roads as windy as they could be). I got sick from eating from someone’s house the night before because there was no way it could have been car sickness. Whatever I had eaten my stomach wanted it to get out REALLY fast. I won’t give you the gory details but for about 3 hours I basically got the bathroom tour of Guatemala and was COMPETELY miserable. I was so embarrassed to be in this car full of people I didn’t even know and having to stop every 15-20 minutes. I was so happy when after about half of the drive I was finally feeling better and the roads got straighter. Our driver was awesome and was so sweet about the whole thing – I was so happy I paid for that van because chicken buses don´t stop for nothin! Since the trip my body hasn’t been completely normal – which really sucks. BUT at least I wasn’t that sick the rest of the trip.

On the way there we stopped at the Ruins of Quirgua – which are basically tributes to the kings that have lots of cool inscriptions on them. The picture with all the inscriptions is from that site. It was nice to get out of the car for a little bit. That’s when the heavy rain really started from the hurricanes.

We got in really late to our hotel that night and planned out our next day. It was such a bummer though because our group all wanted to do different things which ended up being really annoying. The next day at 5 am, Jenna, me, and the young married couple were ready to tackle Tikal. The rain was so bad and because of the horrible weather that there were trees, mud slide debris, and huge boulders in the road. What is usually only a 45 min drive across the National Park to get to Tikal, ended up being an hour in a half. We got there and bought ponchos that saved our entire day of getting soaked – and they make everyone look pretty attractive in these pictures. J

To get to the ruins from the entrance it is about a half an hour hike in the jungle. I loved it! We could hear all the animals, the plants were so cool, and it was SO HUMID. It poured nonstop all day long – but shorts and t-shirt were perfect to wear in the jungle. I so wish I would have bought Chacos (like hiking sandles) before I came – they are the perfect shoe to have here. I had my tennis shoes which of course got soaked and still are stinky and wet to this day. The trails were so muddy and flooded but I was so excited to be there it didn’t even matter.

Tikal was absolutely amazing! The pictures can’t even capture how breathtaking it was. We spent from 6:30 am – 6 pm there only taking a little hour in a half lunch break to dry off. We went to every single ruin there were only the ground except for one that wasn’t even uncovered yet (there were actually a couple that haven’t been unearthed yet, but you can tell they are there). I had no idea there were so many on the grounds before I came. All were a hike to get to and once you got to them they were a hike to climb. I LOVE HIEGHTS! We were climbing these scary wooden staircases up to the tops of these huge pyramids in the pouring pouring rain – I had the time of my life! It was so fun exploring and rock climbing these ancient structures. I have a really funny story about Tikal, a pyramid, and these three guys that asked me to take a picture for them – you’ll have to ask me about it when I get home because its pretty hilarious.

When we got back from Tikal and dinner we went to our hotel to find no electricity and no running water (they only had cold water at this hotel by the way). Luckily before we went to bed the water started working or else we would’ve smelled and looked like muddy jungle the whole next day. There were also these HUGE orange cockroaches at this hotel that ran all over the floor. Needless to say I didn’t enjoy my stay there all that much – but hey the hotel served its purpose which was just to give us a place to sleep.

The next day when the girls went to Tikal – Me, Jenna, and the young couple went on a boat around the island of Flores which was connected to the city we stayed in by a bridge. It had stopped raining for about an hour in a half which was absolutely perfect for our tour! For 10 bucks we got a private boat ride, a guide, and admission to this little Guatemalan zoo. The zoo there had the coolest exotic animals (and some not so exotic) – and some were barely in cages so we got to get SO CLOSE! There is a picture of this Jaguar seriously 50 feet away from us…it was so cool! The guide told us about the animals and also took us on this little hike in the jungle to a really pretty lookout point.

The rest of the day was spent getting ready for the long drive by getting food and such. It was an adventure finding a bank – whenever I go to tourist places on weekends I have to get money out because there is no place for me to get it in Patzicia. We got some food and then started the long trek home. The storm was pretty bad our whole way home which slowed things down a bit. The rain hasn’t stopped since. That’s a whole blog in itself about this hurricane weather that been here for over a week!