I was finally able to move about
4/5 weeks ago to a new place closer to the center of town. The family in my old
place was great but my room was always very dark and damp and kind of
depressing. I now live in a much busier part of town, closer to my office, the
market and the soccer field which is where I spend most of time. My room is now
very bright and I even have a little patio where I am planting a garden.
About a week after moving in I was
beginning to grow suspicious of some disappearing food. At first I thought mice
but then decided that the missing food was too big for a mouse to carry off. My
second thought was rats. A couple nights in a row I could hear something moving
around in the kitchen and got up to check it out but was never able to find the
culprit. Finally, I decided to put out some bait and see what I could find. I
made a peanut butter sandwich, put it on the table and left the room. Within
two minutes I heard something moving the plate around and ran into the kitchen to
find a couple stray cats fighting over the food. When they saw me they snatched
up the sandwich, jumped out the window and climbed the ladder I had built
leading up to the roof. I now keep my window closed and usually throw whatever
I don’t eat up on the roof.. it seems to be keeping them at bay.
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| Bedroom. |
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| Kitchen. | |
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| Kitchen. |
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| Bedroom. |
Two weeks ago I was the lucky
recipient of two visitors, Sean and Tim. The first thing on our to-do list was
to get them their first ever shoe shine. The little shoe shine boys didn’t
really know what to do when they were presented with Sean and Tim’s converse
sneakers but after a little running around they came back with some white
polish that they rubbed onto the sole of their shoes. After getting their shoes
shined Sean and Tim were feeling pretty bad for the little boys and decided it
was time to take them to their first restaurant and buy them so good ol’
American Hamburgers. Unfortunately, there were no golden arches in site so we
took the boys (which quickly grew from 2 to 6) to a nearby restaurant where we
ordered a round of hamburgers, put it on Sean’s tab and left the waiters to
figure out the rest.
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| Shoe shine. |
On Friday we met up with a couple
of my friends and hiked up a volcano outside of town. Volcan Pacaya has been
active in recent years and is known to frequently spit lava which can be seen
at night. Hoping to see the spitting lava, we took the afternoon tour which
turned out to be a pretty poor choice. While climbing up the volcano the tour
guide stopped us 6 or 7 times to take in the beautiful vistas over lagoons,
forests, other volcano peaks and distant cities but because we took the
afternoon tour all we saw were clouds, fog and rain. What started out as a
disappointing tour due to the clouds turned out to be pretty cool once we
reached the top of the volcano where we were walking in a desert of volcanic
rock.
After Antigua we headed towards
Lago Atitlan where we stayed for two nights. The first night we stayed in a
nature reserve a couple hundred yards away from the lake and the second night
we stayed in a nice hotel on the side of a cliff, right up against the water.
The hotel, La Casa del Mundo, was built about twenty years ago and since then
the water level has risen 18 meters leaving balconies and flights of stairs
submerged in the lake, which makes for a pretty neat scene… It was so nice to
be able to pal around with Sean and Tim, I can’t wait for my next opportunity
to see family and friends from home.
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| Brothers on Pacaya. |
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| Sean in the chicken bus. |
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| Underwater balconies. |
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| Palin around. |
I recently started working with one of the local schools to build and plant a garden, but the only land that the school had available for us to use is the spot where they have been burning trash for the past 15 years. We started clearing the trash last week and it took us five hours to dig out all of the melted trash. There are 36 kids in the class and they are pretty amazing. They have worked for the whole school day and then stayed an hour after school ended two days in a row to keep working on the garden. We started with the bamboo fence today, but ended up being about two bamboo shoots short. Here are some pictures..
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| Trash. |
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| Clearing trash. |
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| After we cleared the trash and leveled the ground. |
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| Everyone brought their own bamboo. |
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| First couple posts. |
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| In America you get suspended for bringing a knife to school. In Guatemala you are encouraged to bring a machete to school. |
Going to leave with a quick story. Yesterday I was
digging a garden in my friend’s backyard when I felt a stinging in my hand,
kind of like a bee sting, but when I looked at my hand I didn’t see anything.
After digging for about five minutes I started to feel more stings all over my
body, on my legs, arms, back and stomach. I didn’t see anything on my shirt but
when I looked at my lighter colored pants I noticed that I was covered in ants.
They were everywhere and they were biting relentlessly. I started pinching them
off and swatting them but it wasn’t enough. I ended up having to strip all of
my clothes off and run inside to the shower to get them off my body. I now have
pretty good sized bites all over my body. I miss the nice ants in New Jersey.
