Week 1 - The Mountain School

Umberto, Francisco, Andi, and Elbia My family at the Mountain School
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After 12 hours or so of sleep, we woke up, showered, and ate pancakes.  After breakfast I decided to explore the neighboring communities a bit with Pablo.  The area we were in was one of the most impoverished areas in the country.  The neighboring communties were small, 25 to 50 families each, and very poor.  They consisted mainly of one small dirt road lined with 2 room cinder block houses.  About half of the houses had electricity.  There was one or two small shops in the area that had general goods.  All the people were very friendly and would greet me as I walked by.  There were kids in the road playing futbol (soccer), and would invite me to play.  Later that afternoon we were guided to the families that would be providing us with 3 meals a day for the remainder of our stay at the school.  My family consisted of the parents, 2 daughters, and 1 son.  Their house was 2 small rooms, no electricity, and boards and blankets for beds.  They were the nicest people I've ever known.  For lunch we had rice with a liquidy salsa, chicken, and corn tortillas.  I thought it was good.  Later that evening when returning for supper, I walked into the wrong house.  The family in this house looked at me confused and with my minimal knowledge of spanish at the time, it was quite embarassing.  Luckily they figured out what was going on and directed me to the right house (all the houses looked identical =/).  The meal was basically the same as lunch only prepared a bit differently.  That evening Amy, Ingrid, Pablo, and I went for a long walk further up into the mountains.  Saw some amazing views.

The class rooms
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The next day 3 more students arrived.  Eric, Mira, and Marianna.  All from the States.  We met our teachers, talked for a while, then started class.  Classes consisted of 1 on 1 teaching for 4 hours a day with a Guatemalan Spanish teacher.  My teacher was very good, I enjoyed my classes.  I found myself progressing very fast.  Every day I could see improvement in my Spanish.  We continued to go to our families 3 times a day for meals.  I would usually stay for an hour or so after meals to play catch or soccer with Andi.  Andi was the youngest in the family, she was 6.  She was very shy at first but gradually started to talk to me more and more as the meals went on.  She was very curious and would ask me lots of questions about where I came from, and would laugh at me when I couldn't figure out how to explain it in her language.  She helped me a lot with my speaking.

I miss the people.

Neighbor friends Brenda and Monica
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The next day I woke up, went to breakfast, class, lunch, hung out, then in the evening a man from the neighboring village of Fatima came and told us the story of his community.  How they were screwed over by their boss, their government, the United States government, etc.  I could go on and on about it but choose not to at the moment.  It was sad.

The next day, instead of class, we loaded up a pickup truck with 5 100lb bags of corn, along with all of us and our teachers.  The back of this olllld small pickup had 500 lbs of corn and 11 people.  We road in the pickup for about 45 minutes deeeeep into the mountains.  Windey dirt roads, ups and downs, waterfalls, bridges, lush green, it was amazing.  We eventually got to another small community that had been hit particularily hard by the hurricane the week before.  All of their crops had been destroyed and being so far into the mountains they had no other way to get to any outside help.  We gave the people the corn for which they seemed very grateful.  We went to a local day-care type thing and played with the children for about an hour.  After this we boarded the pick-up again, and managed to fit another family of 4 into the back so we now had 15.  Went back to school and had an hour of class.

Behind the School
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The next day, Amy, myself, and our teachers went on a tour of the local finca (farm).  It was an old coffee plantation where many of the locals used to work.  It was pretty interesting.  We saw how coffee is harvested and prepared, the owner's mansion, and how the workers lived.  After this I went to lunch then hung out with Andi for a while.  That evening we had a speaker tell us about Guatemala's Revolution.  It was Dia de la Revolucion.

The next day I woke up, went to breakfast, then had a little graduation thing from classes and took a couple pictures.  In the afternoon we played Spanish Scrabble for a while then played futbol with our neighbors Blanca and Monica.  I went to supper and played with Andi and her friends for a bit.  That evening a lady and her daughter came to the school and taught us how to make a Guatemalan Dessert called Rellenos de Plantanas.  Good stuff.  That night we bought a bunch of cerveza (beer) and sat around and drank and talked.

Local kids
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The next morning we went on a 4 hour hike through the mountains with a guide from Fatima.  It was beautiful.  Later played with the neighbor kids and taught them some english words they were curious about.  That evening the power went out for a while so we sat around, drank cerveza, ate ice cream, and talked.  Good times.

The next day I went to my last meal with my family ='(.  Went on a walk with Andi and gave her a watch I had brought as a gift.  She cried, I was quite sad.  After breakfast we boarded the back of a pickup truck taxi and went to the neighboring city of Colomba to check out the Sunday market.  It was pretty cool.  We used the internet, talked to people back home for the first time since we left, and got some ice cream.  The pickup we boarded to go back to the school broke down a few minutes outside of Colomba so we had to wait for another to pass.  Got back, played some soccer with Andie, Blanca, Monica, and Carlos.  Said our final goodbyes =(, then left for Guatemala's second largest city.  Quetzaltenango, also known and Xela.  This would be our home for the next 4 weeks.