last weekend at Lago Atitlan

Lago Atitlan is, by far, one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. Unreal. It reminds me a lot of Tahoe, only with steeper mountains and totally different character.

We got a private shuttle leaving from Xela at 7 a.m. and had a motion-sickness-inducing ride through the mountains down to Atitlan. We arrived in San Pedro around 10 a.m. to our obscenely beautiful, relatively new hotel right by the Santiago dock. We divided up our party of 6 between 2 rooms and headed out to check out what San Pedro has to offer.

The answer to that quandry is: lots of expatriates who own businesses in the town. Pretty much every sign we saw was in English. Now, that's not, by itself, a bad thing. It IS, however, an impediment to the purpose of my trip; i.e., learning more Spanish.

It was just before noon when we saw a sign advertising BBQ and bocce at a place called ¨La Piscina.¨ Uh, really?? I could be eating a BURGER and playing BOCCE? Oh, so there.

Thus began and ended my first day in San Pedro. Well, it wasn't entirely over after that, but the afternoon sure was shot. La Piscina serves a very deadly concoction that they swear is just sangria but is actually the tastiest and most dangerous thing I have ever consumed. I lost terribly at bocce. I had a lot of sangria and a tasty burger as well. My friends and I went back to our hotel to nap before dinner. An excellent day overall.

Next morning I was supposed to hike volcano San Pedro with some friends, but I couldn't make the 4:30 a.m. wakeup call, so I continued sleeping instead. Woke up a couple hours later and had brunch with other non-hikers. We continued wandering around town, and it got a bit too hot out for that activity to remain comfortable. We went back to the hotel to drink white wine and await the arrival of our hiker friends.

Their hike only took 4 or 5 hours. I wish I had gone, but I was also informed that it was far more brutal than my demanding morning of brunch, wine, and a token amount of studying. We all chatted on the patio of the hotel. Half of our crew left to get a chicken bus back to Xela. Then one of the hikers went down to our room to shower, and found out her bag (containing all her money, debit card, and passport) had just been stolen from our hotel room.

Oh fuck.

What do you do when this happens?

1. Freak out if you were the one robbed; get mega-calm if you are her friend who will have to help her navigate the next steps.
2. Go to internet cafe. Cancel all cards. Research how to get your passport for your flight that leaves in less than 48 hours.
3. Figure out how to get to your country's embassy ASAP in the morning. This involves an early trip as well as your friends spotting you money for your private shuttle that gets you to the embassy during its ridiculous hours.
4. Go to the police - the special tourism police, in our case. They will write up a report that you can take to the embassy to aid in getting your passport. They initially seem very helpful. Then they will call the owner of the hotel where you are staying, and he will demand an inspection (and will also pay off the cops to come do this).
5. Deal with the police when they show up at your hotel unnanounced. Go back to police station another time to amend police report. Politely decline when police say 'you know, we could help you,' as in, if you are willing to pay.
   
6. Drink heavily upon return.
7. Sleep as much as possible to deal with shit the next day.

My friends and I took a boat from San Pedro to Panajachel, another beautiful town that is a bit bittersweet for me now. The friend who was robbed got on a shuttle to the capitol immediately and managed to arrive at the embassy an hour before it closed. They were nice enough to stay open 1 hour later until her emergency passport was ready. My other friend and I attempted to get on a shuttle back to Xela, and found out there was a huge protest over energy prices blocking the highway in that direction.

Uh.

So we had to stay in Panajachel until 4 p.m. We sat in a cafe all day, eating, drinking, studying, and appreciating the fact we two were the ones stuck and not our friend who needed to make it to the embassy.

4 p.m. - we go to catch our shuttle. All is well for about half an hour, when we discover that there has been a ROCK SLIDE on the highway. We spend the next 2 hours in a restaurant along the highway (and yes, it is singular 'highway' because there really is only one that can take us where we need to go). Depart from here around 6:30. Change shuttles 3 times over the next 2-ish hours. Arrive back in Xela around 9 p.m. We checked out of our hotel at 8 a.m.

Oh god, what a weekend.

*****

One piece of news that alleviates my homesickness: it has apparently been a very cold, wet May in San Francisco. I spent last weekend at a tropical Central American lake. Yeah.

what. a. weekend.

This weekend was ridiculous. Mostly in not-good ways. I need a while to package it up and post it for you. The full report will entail:

• a description of a bocce tournament at the best ex-pat pool bar in San Pedro, Guatemala;
• instructions on how to get an emergency passport if yours (not mine in this case, but a friend's) is stolen within 48 hours of you needing to leave the country;
• tips for dealing with corrupt Guatemalan policemen;
• how to maintain your sanity when a protest and then a rockslide prevent you from returning home for 12 hours.

Ridiculous weekend. That's what I've got to say.

*****

I had an email this morning letting me know that training for the SF Half Marathon begins today. That's both good and bad: bad, because I cannot start training now. No matter what you hear, running in Xela is really effing hard unless you go to the track. I don't want to run in circles. And good, because that means I am only 2 weeks behind in training. This may not end up being my fastest race, but I will certainly be able to finish it.

Overall, that reminder made me REALLY REALLY homesick and sad. I only have 10 more days in Xela, and 12 more in Guatemala. That's not very long to enjoy a country I've never seen before. Then again, this weekend certainly soured my enjoyment up to this point and made me a lot more vigilant about safety.

more Guatemala chatter

I keep going back and forth between loving this trip and wondering what I´m getting out of it. I think this is probably related to coping with homesickness. Over the last two weeks, I´ve certainly vacillated between rage, bargaining, and acceptance. Every other day I´ve found something to be bitchy about. WAH! I don´t wanna do homestay anymore! I´m a big girl and I don´t wanna have a semi-official curfew! Or, WAH! There are too many students here now - I wanna talk to patients instead of teaching the newbies! WAH! WAH!!!!!!

And today my lesson was a field trip to the huge market in Chichicastenango, which was kind of awesome. The town itself was far more touristy than Xela - prices in restaurants were prety high, the gringo population was pretty substantial and pretty multinational, not just US folks, and the vendors were aggressive. More so than I´ve seen anywhere else in this country.

Taking my lesson out of the classroom was an excellent idea. Class is helpful, but I´d rather practice in the streets than sit head-to-head and both spend a lot of time daydreaming and staring out the window. Oh, and learning verb tenses. Yeah, that too.

I think I´m benefitting from this trip overall. A good test will be tomorrow´s clinic - I´m slated to work triage, which is an excellent test of both my comprehension and conversational skills. Yesterday there was a moment in which I forgot a word in English and tried to say it in Spanish instead, which was a pretty good sign for my language acquisition process.

Still, I do have an eye on the calendar and am pretty happy about reaching the near-halfway point in my trip. I´ll be ready to go home in 2 weeks. I no longer want to go home earlier than that, but I´ll be happy to see May 30th. I also think that´s a nice testament to the fact that my life at home is pretty awesome - friends, running, pending school newness - and I´ll be happy to get back to it knowing now how badly I miss it.

I went to the world's oddest natural history museum today. It was mostly Mayan archeological finds and really creepy taxidermy.

I need to reiterate and re-emphasize that statement: REALLY CREEPY taxidermy.

Lots of armadillos. Fetuses in formaldehyde. Tons of tatty birds. Creepily poised predators. Dear god, so weird.

Walking around Xela today I heard what I presume to be a high school band practicing. Why do I assume this? Why, because yours truly was in one of those, and knows what pop music arranged for marching band sounds like. I've been hearing a very brassy and bad (yes, worse than the original) version of "Bad Romance" off and on all day.

I'm in an internet cafe and have certainly expanded my Spanish vocabulary sitting here. Can you define pornografiar? I sure can.

Anyway, I'm delaying going home to my host family. I need to go back, maybe have dinner with them, then probably head out to watch the local soccer team's big game, probably via TV in a bar with some other students.

Weeeeeeird day.

synaptic plasticity is awesome

I think last night a switch finally went off in my head, and Spanish is falling into place quite nicely. I realized during lecture today that I know what´s going on. And I know this because today´s lecture was a mish-mosh of Mayan astronomy and philosophy, theoretical physics, an herbal pharmacopeia, and the economics of medical care...and I totally understood what was happening. Uh, yeah.

Then I watched the Superchivos (yes, it means ¨Super Goats¨ - Xela´s soccer team) lose very unfortunately.

And then I went on a camioneta (chicken bus) to go to a guarderia (day care) in Llano del Pinal, about 20 minutes away by bus. I made 2 little friends who found me interesting for about 15 minutes each. Then a bunch of little girls asked me my age, and refused to believe me because they couldn´t find any canas (gray hairs) - and yes, they looked. Then another camioneta back to school, where I now sit and am about to do homework before an all-school dinner. FUN.

Instead of avoiding fellow Gringos, I´ve actually made friends. I´ve got a pretty set group of folks with whom I have drinks after school and such, and the other people in the medical program all turned out to be pretty great. So, WIN.

I still feel awkward about doing a homestay, but between school, clinic, and homework, I´m not home much except to sleep. And the awkward feeling diminishes every day as I´m better able to communicate with them. Also, last night we went to a bar in a hostel, which would be my housing alternative to homestay, and it was full of irritating hippies. So...I´m gonna feel awkward anywhere. Might as well go with the option that feeds and shelters me, eh?

Anyway, back to homework.

Guate: first update

I got into Guatemala on Sunday night and have either been asleep, on transportation of some ilk, or being overwhelmed since my arrival. Here´s the short version of the last 3 days.

Landed in the City on Sunday afternoon. Got a ride to my hotel and saw my favorite sight possibly ever: an entire family on a motorcycle. As in, kid on the tank, Dad driving, another kid behind him, and Mom bringing up the rear. With her helmet securely tucked into the crook of her elbow. It was the only helmet on board. Ah. Definitely no longer in the US.

First night involved SLEEPING and not much else. There was another lodger there who spoke only French and Spanish, so I got to translate some words for her from French-Spanish so she could communicate with staff. Which was neat, but didn´t help my brain organize itself into the mean, lean, Spanish-only machine I´m hoping for.

(quick note: punctuation on Spanish keyboards is WAY different. Pardon any weird symbols or the like.)

Next morning went to the bus terminal at 5:30 (yep!) for a 6:15 bus. I slept most of the way, thanks to my allegedly less-drowsy Dramamine.

I´m a veritable pharmacopia of anti-nausea meds. Lots of Pepto, taken 4x a day to prevent diarrhea and vomiting. I´m on day 3 in Central America with no GI upset, so I assume it´s working.

I arrived a bit late to my first class - a lecture in Spanish on Guatemalan health beliefs and cultural competency in a medical setting. It was awesome, and i got about 80% or more of what was going on. That was a nice confidence booster.

Then my family came to the school to meet me. This is the part I´m having the most difficulty around: homestay. I´m old. Like, really old. And I´m used to coming and going as I please, NOT having other people in the house who want to know when I´ll be back and such. And it´s for a good reason they ask - so they know when to feed me - but I still hate feeling like such a stranger in the place where I sleep. The family is little old grandma, her daughter, and daughter´s 3 sons. They´re all nice the food is great, my room and bathroom are private, and they help me practice my Spanish skills, but I honestly don´t know if I can hack this part. I like being alone A LOT. So I may opt for a hostel for the rest of the trip.

This weekend I am likely going to a big soccer match in town, just to get a feel for that part of the culture, then I hope to go out and see the town. A nice day of wandering, eating, shopping, and drinking. I feel like if my host family is OK with me being out until all hours, sweet. I can handle another 3 weeks of that. But if they aren´t so down with that, I think I need to live elsewhere. Sunday is a day-long hike to a local coffee farm near a beautiful lake. Lots of photo opps, I hear.

I now have a lecture to attend, which is a great way to passively absorb the language. Classes are intense, one-on-one, 4-hour affairs. Clinic in the morning is NUTS and AMAZING and I worked ¨triage,¨which is a total misnomer because I was basically taking full patient histories. In Spanish. AWESOME. Tomorrow we do a mobile clinic to a tiny village 30 minutes away. Lots of intestinal parasites and such.

I´m adjusting to a very different lifestyle. No work. I haven´t been out at ALL yet. Not so much electronic obsession. I brought my phone but haven´t used it yet. This is about the second time I´ve used a computer since Saturday. I´m sleeping a ton, eating 3 homemade meals a day. I gotta say, some parts are nice. I´m not homesick, per se, but I am looking forward to coming home. I don´t think I´ll opt to extend my trip an extra week.

I'm off!

Yesterday was my last day @ work. Weird, weird feeling. I then promptly ignored my responsibilities for the evening in favor of going out. When I woke up this morning, the panic ensued.

Am I ready for my trip? On that plane that leaves, y'know, TONIGHT? No. No, I am not.

So today was harried packing, a nice 8-mile run, delicious Vietnamese food for lunch, a last-minute trip for any OTC medications I could possibly need, and now I am taking a breather before leaving for the airport. I plan to get there around 7, have a leisurely dinner, get through security with plenty of time pre-flight, buy a gifty trinket for my host family, and board my flight.

The theme of today has been WTF AM I DOING???????? I'm full of thoughts of finality. When I was on my run I kept thinking, "this is the last time I'm going to do this run." Which I know isn't true, but I can't help but think weird thoughts right now. I feel...off. I think it's just because this is the beginning of a drastically new routine. Even though I'll be back in a month, I haven't taken a month off from my routine EVER. I've changed routines, but in a much more rapid-fire fashion than this. This is such a foreign feeling. When I get home, it'll be to a temporary new routine. I'll be out of shape from a month off from running. I'll be broke without the steady job income, instead living off my admittedly meager savings. Then SCHOOL.

All right. Back to alternating panic and excitement. Next time - a post from Central America!