Salsa-ing, pickpocketers, and lots of tea

Last night some physical therapy students that are staying with my host family took me out to teach me to salsa. Wow. I am really, really bad at it. And I was the only gringo in the entire place. To my fellow gringos, I apologize for so poorly representing you (even though that representation was probably accurate).

Okay a bit more interesting of a story- today I was walking to the school from the bus stop in Ciudad Vieja and a guy comes up smiling and apparently wanting to chat. Usually people are pretty friendly towards me and we exchange hellos and how are you doings as I pass, but this guy was being a bit too friendly. When he acted like he was going to hug me is when I knew something was definitely up. As I tried to avoid him I saw out of the corner of my eye that his hand was reaching for the pocket that held my wallet. I spun around, mustered up the meanest look I could make (thanks, Dad for the training...), gave him a nice little shove (okay, maybe it wasn't so nice or little and perhaps it was a bit more than a shove, but it's not like i'm about to politely shove someone who just tried to rob me - as a matter of fact I don't think its possible to politely shove someone) towards the sidewalk, and walked away. Note to self- carry my knife from now on in Ciudad Vieja.

Well I put "lots of tea" in the title thinking I had something to write about but I completely forgot what I was going to say. There's really no story behind it. I've just been drinking a lot of tea. That is an incredibly boring thing to write in a blog post. I apologize.

And just to make this post even more random than it already is, here are a few photos:

Looking through the arches of the Palace of the Captains-General, built in 1558 and refurbished a number of times since after earthquakes. Today it holds a few government offices and a museum.

The view from where I work everyday.

Well, that is all for now.

Semuc Champey for the Weekend

After spending last week sick, I decided I needed to take a weekend to travel somewhere else and then come back to Antigua refreshed and ready to more or less start over. Semuc Champey seemed like the perfect place -- and it was. Dense jungle, cascading pools of incredibly blue water, and cave-swimming were all a part of a perfect short trip.

The pools are so blue due to limestone that forms a bridge over the actual river, which flows underneath the pools and comes out at the other end. 

Where the river goes underground. It comes out on the other side of the pools.

This week I think I might start a nutrition program for the remainder of the school's summer program. It looks like the summer program is going to end earlier than was thought, which is going to open up some extra time for travel. Maybe a trip up to Belize...? We'll see.

Parasitic Amoebas... ewwww. Oh, and some history stuff too

Well i've spent the past four days lying in a lumpy bed with a pretty bad bacterial stomach infection and parasitic amoebas. So, I guess I don't really have much to write about at this point considering I haven't really done anything since the last time I posted. It's a little frustrating that I haven't yet been able to establish any normalcy in my daily routine, mostly because my routine has changed so many times -- the first day I had to get to Antigua on my own, the next day I wandered around until I found the volunteer office and was set up with my host family, then there was the field day at the school and next was the first  day of real classes then the weekend came then I got sick. Each day has been completely different from the day before and that can be... exhausting. At least I've had time to rest.

I've started reading a pretty good book about cold-war Guatemala called Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. This vid sums up some of what I've read so far:

So Arbenz was the only the second democratically elected president in the history of the country. He, along with Fransisco Arana, led the "October Revolution" that overthrew the quasi-totalitarian regime that suppressed the working class and kept the majority of the country's wealth in the hands of some 2% of the population. After the overthrow succeeded, the revolutionaries had to deal with a completely broken country, which proved to be no easy task. The first president, Juan José Arévalo, entered with a romantic fire and a genuine desire to democratize the country, saying in his inaugural address:

"[W]e are going to begin a period of sympathy for the man who works in the fields, in the shops, on the military bases, in small businesses. We are going to make men equal to men. We are going to add justice and humanity to order...We are going to give civic and legal value to all people who live in this republic"

Despite some success in democratization, the country as a whole saw little improvement, and the once passionate Arévalo appeared a disillusioned man during his speech at Arbenz's inauguration, ending his speech with the words "It is my personal opinion that the contemporary world is moved by the ideas that served as the foundation on which Hitler rose to power." Yeah, he was pretty bummed.

So Arbenz took over and instituted sweeping agrarian reform that radically increased minimum wages and brought peasants from the brink of starvation. Even though Arbenz had no connection to communism and was himself not particularly fond of marxism, fear of communism was so strong in the USA that, well, you watched the video. It's also interesting to note the John Cabot Lodge, ambassador to the U.N. who blatantly lied about the CIA intervention in Guatemala, was a big stockholder in the United Fruit Company, as were a number of congressmen and CIA officials.

If you've got the time, there's a five-part documentary on youtube that goes into more detail about the CIA intervention.

I though this would be a short post but I guess I got carried away. Oh well.

 

Another video

I wish I had made this video a bit longer. I took it the first day I got here while I was wandering around the park munching on some tacos.

Some slapstick street humor

Here's a vid of some street entertainment I took the other day in the mercado:

It's all good.

Okay, so I finally have a sense of what I'm doing here. This morning I went to the office of volunteers and settled everything out and moved into my host mom's apartment (her name is Sandra). She's a short little ball of energy and a great cook, so i'm excited about living at her place for the next five weeks. I took a chicken bus (a small inter-city bus driven with complete disregard for safety by reckless lunatics) to the school where I will be working in Ciudad Vieja.

Here's a video explaining the organization with which I'll be working, Niños de Guatemala:

Right now I'm in a cafe nibbling on Canillitas de Leche, a candy made out of milk, and a really good cappuccino. Time to head back to Sandra's for dinner.

The Journey Begins...

After over a year of planing and preparation, the trip has finally begun. My flight left this morning from Nashville at 5:30 and after a rather bumpy flight with an abnormally high number of crying children, I landed in Guatemala City around 11:30 AM, giving me plenty of time to catch a 45-minute cab ride to Antigua (The traffic was horrible. Today is Día de los Muertos and the highway was completely packed with people going to visit cemeteries). My original plans were to be picked up by the organization with which i'll be working (more on them later). I had a feeling that they might not show up especially since today is a major holiday here and, alas, I was correct. I decided to just grab a cab to Antigua and figure it out here since the office of volunteer coordination is not to far from my hostel (I found it after wandering around the town for a while). All part of the adventure, I guess. While searching for the office, I was able to see most of the town. Below are a few pics.

Three volcanoes dominate Antigua's horizon. The one to the south, Volcán de Agua, is the largest and in this picture it disappears into the clouds. Note the cobblestone roads and colonial architecture. Neat.

These colonial-era cathedrals are all over the place. Some, like the one above and to the left, are a bit deteriorated.

There were literally hundreds of kites flying really, really high up.  People would find open areas to let their kite out and navigate all the trees and electrical wires. There were a number of entangled kites that didn't make it all the way up.



I took some cool videos that I'm having trouble uploading right now. I'll try to get those up later. Right now it's time for some much needed rest.