Myette.org

Greetings from Xela, Guatemala. We’ve been here just over a week now so I thought this would be a good time to update everyone, let you know we’re doing well and recount a few of our adventures thus far.

For those just interested in the highlights here they are:

• We are safe, with no major bouts with bad food or water.
• We broke the pew in church. 
• We climbed a 12,000 foot volcano and looked down on an active eruption. 
• We are having fun and studying hard. 
• Check out pics at the website http://www.myette.org/gallery

For those interested in the long version read on.

We arrived in Guatemala last Friday after two weeks of traveling and visiting family in Florida. We met up with another Finca volunteer Daniel at the airport in Guatemala City, stayed the night in Guatemala City and on Saturday took an early bus to Xela. The ride to Xela is beautiful and rises into the mountains from about 5,000 feet in Guatemala City to 8,000 feet in Xela. The name of the city is actually Quetzaltenango, but almost everyone calls it by its Mayan name Xela (pronounced Shay-La).

It’s a pretty amazing city that sits high up in the mountains in sort of a bowl with mountains all surrounding us. At 100,000 people it’s Guatemala’s second largest city. There is still a large indigenous population of Mayan descent and I would say about half of the women still wear traditional dress. It isn’t a particularly touristy town so we really feel like we’re getting the feel of living in Guatemala as opposed to some random tourist mecca.

One little surprise has been the weather. I had been mentally preparing myself for the heat and humidity of coastal Honduras and didn’t realize until two days before we left that Xela’s climate at 8000 feet is vastly different. The days are warm here and the nights are cool. Average highs are around 70 or 72 degrees with lows at night dipping to the high 40s. It’s really comfortable and although it’s the rainy season we’ve been able to dodge the raindrops except for our first night here when the three of us got soaked to the bone walking back from an internet café. We got home, dried off and sat down to dinner only to have the lights go out in the first of our blackouts. So we ate dinner in the dark and have gotten used to the semi-frequent loss of power (five so far) and they only last for an hour or two.

Sunday brought us to mass at the main church in the city center. We went with Daniel and Laura (another volunteer) and as soon as we sat down in church the pew collapsed underneath us. It was both incredibly embarrassing and wildly funny. The whole place turned to look at the crazy gringos who broke the pew.

The whole purpose for our being in Guatemala of course is to learn Spanish, and learn we have. Xela is a very popular place to learn Spanish and there are probably 15 or 20 language schools in Xela alone. We are studying at Juan Sisay language school where for $100 a week we get 5 hours of one-on-one instruction with a teacher. We?ve worked out a nice schedule where I go from 8am to 1pm and Erika studies for four hours from 2-6pm. It’s worked out really well so that one of us can always be with Michael. We both have really good teachers and feel like we’re making lots of progress. I started the week having never taken a Spanish class in my life and ended the week being able to communicate complete thoughts and have some semblance of a conversation. It’s by no means a miracle but progress is definitely being made. It’s very hard, but fun too and my teacher is totally crazy. When he wants to make sure I’m following everything he asks, “Preguntas, dudas, piedras, tomates?” or “Questions, doubts, rocks, tomatoes?”  Still not sure entirely what he means but it’s still pretty funny.

Erika on the other hand is a rock star Spanish student who talks about things like welfare and psycho children with her teacher (who also studied psychology and knows all of the necessary lingo) because her Spanish is getting so good. And of course Michael is the best of all, because even though he doesn’t go to school he’s starting to pick up a ton of Spanish just from being around it. Erika’s teacher, Lucky (short for Luccicia and pronounced Lukey), taught him to say popcorn in Spanish (”poporopo”) and he just cracks everyone up when he says it. Yesterday someone asked him his name in Spanish and he understood the question and answered correctly!

The adjustment has gone pretty well. The rest of the students at the language school live with a family, but because of Michael we chose to get an apartment. We decided that the stress of living in someone else?s house with a toddler would outweigh the benefit of speaking Spanish with our host family. Our apartment is great. It’s bigger than our place in Hyde Park and about a 15 minute walk from school. It has a kitchen where we make breakfast and dinner and the school was able to set us up with a family right next door to the school who cooks us lunch in the break between when Erika and I take classes. For $15 a week for all of us it’s a total deal and since lunch is the big meal of the day here it takes the pressure off of cooking and we usually just have sandwiches or pasta for dinner. Not to mention that Carmen is a super good cook and we never leave the table hungry.

The biggest surprise for us has been how busy we are. We go to school all day, come home and study for at least another hour or two at night (ok, maybe not quite an hour every night, but I really try!). The school also organizes activities every afternoon and on the weekends so we never have a shortage of fun things to do. On Tuesday I took Michael on the field trip to the hot baths in Almolonga a few kilometers outside of Xela. It was a school trip so there were about 16 of us and Michael got to ride in his first chicken bus which is the main mode of transport in Guatemala. Basically a chicken bus is a school bus from the US that failed emissions testing, got shipped to Guatemala, was painted funky colors and put back on the road (for those of you in Chicagoland we saw a bus from Crystal Lake yesterday). Friday was basketball and soccer (gringos vs. teachers) and Erika went to the beach on Saturday the Pacific is about 2 hours away) with people from school. The sand actually came from lava flow, not rocks, so it was black and a little wierd. She also got to visit a coffee farm and see how coffee is harvested, cleaned/fermented, and separated for use here and for export.

Yesterday we got up at 4am to hike to the top of the Santa Maria Volcano. Don’t worry, Santa Maria is dormant. It towers over Xela at 12,378 feet and is next to the active volcano Santiaguita. We got some bad info on just how difficult the hike was and in retrospect we´re just lucky we made it ourselves let alone with Michael. Bottom line it was the toughest hike I´ve ever done in my life and I did it with Michael on my back. As always, he was a champ and there were only a few minutes when I thought we weren´t going to make it. It pushed Erika to (if not a bit beyond) her limits, but as always our friends came to our rescue and it was a huge community building experience. We made it to the top to see an amazing view and two eruptions of Santiaguita. If you look at any pictures these are the ones to see. In all it was a 4,288 foot ascent and took us 11 hours round trip. Our bodies feel it today I assure you.

In between school and play we’re also working on building community with the other Finca volunteers (Finca del Niño is Spanish for Farm of the Child). We traveled to Xela with Daniel, Laura arrived on Saturday and Naomi arrived on Wednesday. There are now five of us here with another four arriving at different points in the next few weeks. We had our first community night on Wednesday and had great community building, reflection and prayer. We are really blessed with a great group so far and are anxiously awaiting the arrival of the rest of our volunteer class.

One thing that is especially cool for us is how great the other volunteers are with Michael. They just love him so much and he loves them. It’s very cute because every night before bed he prays for “Naymomo, Loora and Danyeel.”  It’s really taken the pressure off of us because they’ll take him for a walk or just hold him while we try to get something accomplished or whatever. He also knows everyone on the walk to school and all the women call out his name. He’s the only blond, blue-eyed baby in Xela and such a novelty. It’s really cute to see him wave to everyone and yell out “Hola” and “Adios!” as we walk to school. And of course he’s the talk of the school, students, teachers, everyone. Are we surprised?

As you can see it”s been a pretty busy first week. I was able to upload a few pictures of our adventures this week. You can view them on our website at: http://www.myette.org/gallery We are thinking about all of you at home constantly. Internet access here is good and, like everything else, incredibly cheap (65 cents an hour) so we check email a few times a week. It might take us a little while to respond but we love hearing from everyone. I’ll try and write another update toward the end of September before we leave for Honduras. I’ll also upload pictures occasionally and update the “latest news” part of our website if you’re curious in the mean time. http://www.myette.org In the mean time, please keep us in your prayers. We are working hard to prepare for when we head to the Farm in October and part of that work is our Spanish but the other part is prayer. Thank you so much for all of the love and support you give us. We truly could not do this without you!

Con paz y amor,

Michael-John, Erika and Michael