Myette.org

Greetings again from Guatemala. It’s been about six weeks since my last big update so I thought now would be a good time to fill people in before we leave for Honduras.

First the mini version:

• 7 and a half weeks of Spanish down and one day to go.
• We now have 9 volunteers in our community. 
• We leave for the Finca del Nino in Honduras on Sunday, September 26th.
• Lots of great pictures at http://www.myette.org/gallery

After almost 2 months in Xela it’s hard to believe that this Sunday we’ll be moving to our more permanent home in Honduras. Our primary goal of the last two months has been to get our Spanish up to speed. After 8 weeks/40 days/200 hours of one-on-one Spanish, as long as someone is speaking slowly I can catch the vast majority of what they’re saying and usually talk my way around what I want to say. Erika is of course doing well and really confident in her Spanish. At this point we have all the grammar we need and from now on it’s just a matter of speeding things up, building our vocabulary and getting more and more comfortable with the language. We’ve got the basics down and now it’s just a matter of putting what we know into everyday use. I keep going back and forth between being amazed at how much I’ve learned in 8 weeks and scared to death about having to speak Spanish for real.

Which brings us to our next big move… We leave for Honduras on Sunday, September 26th and will take 6 days to drive down to Trujillo. It’s a 25 hour drive so we’re going to break it up over several days and make a little road trip out of it.  We’ve arranged for a 15 passenger van and a driver to get the 9 of us and all of our stuff down to Trujillo. We’re stopping first in Antigua, Guatemala to see the city and spend some time with Zulena Pescatore and her 5 children. Zulena founded the Finca with her late husband Vincent and still serves as the president of the board of directors. After Antigua it’s on to the Mayan ruins in Copan, Honduras then to La Ceiba for a night before arriving at the Finca on Friday October 1st to begin our orientation. We’ll have almost 2 months of orientation and job shadowing before the volunteers whom we are replacing return to the States. We’ll figure out once we get down there what specific jobs we will have and decide among us who will be teachers, social workers, construction and maintenance, administration and community outreach.

Once we get down to the Farm our email access will drop dramatically so please forgive us if it takes some time to respond or if the updates are further and further apart. On the upside we’ve been working on our old fashioned letter writing so feel free to drop us an actual pen and paper note. Our address from now on will be:

Now that you’ve read this far I feel like I should reward you with just a few of the many funny stories we’ve accumulated in our time in Xela. Traveling in Guatemala is pretty cheap so we’ve been able to see a little bit of the country on our language school stipend. We spent a weekend on the Pacific Ocean in Monterrico and got to play in the big waves, see dolphins, release baby sea turtles and do lots of sitting in hammocks and relaxing and writing letters.

Probably our best story so far was our first trip to San Pedro. We set off for a weekend trip to San Pedro la Laguna which is one of the villages on Lago de Atitlan, a beautiful lake surrounded by volcanoes. We got on the bus to San Pedro asking several different people several different times if this was the correct direct bus to San Pedro. As you’ve probably guessed by now there are, of course, two San Pedros and the one we ended up in was in the exact opposite directions from where we wanted to be. Instead of relaxing in a hammock beside crystal clear waters we were 45 minutes from Chiapas, Mexico. So back on the chicken bus we go, home to Xela. Now not only have we ridden a packed chicken bus (picture a school bus with 3 to a seat with the aisle full of standing people, and 75 people total on board) for 2 hours each way, but Michael also at this point is feeling the effects the Guatemalan food and has a very very bad diaper that we have no choice but to change as the bus is careening around mountain roads. Nothing like changing a wiggly 1 ½ year old on a bus with 75 of your closest Guatemalan friends. When we got back to Xela we decided that the only possible cure was Domino’s Pizza, rum and coke and some late night card games. The rest of the group decided to head to the right San Pedro the next day, but we decided one San Pedro was enough for us and relaxed at home that weekend. We finally made it to Lago de Atitlan this past weekend and I also did a 3 day hike the weekend before from Xela to the Lago. 25 miles, 3 days, lots of pouring rain, and passing through cloud forests and Mayan villages where they still speak Quiche, the indigenous language. It was absolutely amazing and one of the highlights of my time in Guatemala.

Pictures of all of our adventures can be found on the web site at: http://www.myette.org/gallery

My last little tidbit comes courtesy of one of my fellow volunteers who is a reformed vegetarian (she started eating meat before coming to Central America to make life a little easier). She has loved living with her host family and all in all the food has been pretty good. There was the one day though when they didn’t serve her what they served the rest of the family. She asked about it and if she wanted to try it and wanting to be a gracious guest she did. It wasn’t until she was done that she found out it was cow testicles. She had the quote of the trip so far when she declared she needed to brush her teeth again “to get the testicle taste out of my mouth.”

So until next time, ask before you eat. We love you all and will write next from Trujillo, Honduras.

Michael-John, Erika and Michael