NO VOLUNTEERNG. WENT TO SCHOOL WITH MARINA INSTEAD.
I didn’t have volunteering today because the teachers at La Casa de Esperanza had an employee meeting. So I asked Marina if I could join her at work and she said yes. We left at 6:50 am to be there in time for when school starts at 7:30. We took a bus that utimately goes to Guatemala City but we only took it for 20 minutes for Q3.50. I was surprised to see a TV in the bus. We watched Fat Mama on the bus. I guess its not unusual to have TVs on the busses that have longer roots. We got dropped off at the town’s square. In the town square was the typical Church, municipal building, basketball/soccer court, fountain, and school. The school was two levels. 4 classrooms on the bottom and I am not sure how many on the top level. In the hall there were signs that the kids made in honor of those kids who don’t have the priveledge to study and who are rather working. There were signs that said the kids have a right to study and they shouldn’t be working. It was really sad because it’s the truth that kids are put to work at a young age, especilaly to target the tourist population.
She teaches 4th grade at a public school in Santa Catarina that has kids from that town and the next town over, San Antonio. These two villages are Mayan villages. There is no uniform here. Over half of the girls have traditional Mayan clothing. Each village has its own distinct pattern. All of the boys dress in Western styled clothing. There is a mixture of the Mayan language and Spanish in the classroom. For example the calander has the days and months in both languages and also a paragraph in Mayan with a different figure next to each month. She has __ kids in her class. It was her first day back after her surgery and as soon as she got off the bus she had kids running up to her giving her hugs and kisses. It was nice to see how much the kids missed her the past two weeks.
At the beginning of each class there are 4 kids that are assigned to sweep and mop the classroom. Anything left over from the day before is left and cleaned the next day. As soon as they entered the classroom, the four kids got right to work. They didn’t even have to be asked.
Today was a little different and they didn’t follow the normal daily schedule. First off Today was El Dia Del Padre in Guatemala so Marina had a project set up for the kids. They were to make a pop up card using 3 sheets of paper. However the kids had to provide their own paper. So during class they all left on their own time to go buy sheets of paper from a near by store. A couple kids either didn’t have money with them or couldn’t afford it so they didn’t make the card. It was really fun because I thought I would just observe but Marina asked for me to go around and help the kids out if they had questions.
They were surprised I spoke some Spanish. When they first came in the room they thought I could only speak English. It was really sweet when Marina introduced me to a few of her students at the beginning she said, Ella es mi amiga Lorena. So they didn’t know that I was living with her. One girl asked me if I was her daughter.
It was also an unsual day because they had an imprompt to field trip to ___. It is where the water source begins. There is lots of water in this village and the village relies heavily on it to make their living. This trip would never have happened in the US. There was no permission slips and no secure way to make sure all of the kids were accounted for. The kids in Marina’s class weren’t going to go because she couldn’t make the trip because her side was still delicate from surgery. They really wanted her to go and asked if she could take a tuk tuk. She said that the ride would still be too rough, plus the tuk tuk would not have gone to the beginning. So she asked me if I would go and watch out after the kids. I said for sure. I thought that it was just going to be a 5 minute walk and just our class. But the rest of the grades came too and she told me it was about a 2 kilometer walk.
To get there we walked through the cobble stone streets at first. But being that most villages are ON mountains, the walks are usually uphill. People in Guatemala that live in the mountains are very strong and tough people. Then the road turned into dirt. And along this dirt road were houses/little farms inside the house property that relied on the river for irrigation. Towards the top, the road narrowed and there was just a path wide enough for one person to walk on, which was interesting since for over 200 kids went on this field trip. On the way kids would stop at little stores/houses to buy food/drink for their snack. On the journey there, I had two girls helping me cross the more difficult parts because there were some rocks to climb. They were so happy to help me and always made sure to stay by my side. They were really sweet. Also since the beginning of the field trip I had two little boys grab onto my arms and hold on to me for the whole trip until we had to be in a single file line.
The place were we stopped that was the where water [began] was quite weird. There were all sorts of PCV pipes. Some led to where the water flowed down the mountain and others I am not sure at all. I am very confused as to their purpose.
Once we reached the top, the kids all sat down and ate their snack. Some girls asked me where my snack was. When I said I didn’t have one they immediately asked if I wanted some of theirs. I said no thanks because I wasn’t hungry because I was not used to having a snack between breakfast and lunch. When I said that in the US we only eat 3 times a day they were shocked. It was kind of funny. They just sat there and contemplated it.
When I was taking pictures, the little boy that held my arm the entire way up asked if he could take pictures. Of course I said yes and he went to town. He was loving the camera and took so many great pictures of the students and teachers for me. I really like giving the camera to children and seeing what pictures can come out of it. We stayed at the top for 20 minutes to eat. The teachers all brought bags to collect trash and emphasized that the students should through away their trash and any other trash they found on the ground. Even on the walk back they were going off the path to pick up trash. On the way down, we stopped at a part where the kids could get their feet wet and stand in the stream. Instead lots sat down and drenched themselves. Of course the water was cold so I’m surprised so many of them got in. It was cute they had a splashing fight and it was typical in the fact that there were some girls that didn’t want to get wet that became the target for splashing.
We walked back and the teachers took us on a detour that we had to climb another steep hill. It turned out to be a pretty cool view of the town and valley. We were gone for a total of 2.5 hours I think. I helped the kids finish up their cards. We went past 12:30 when class ended. Marina stayed with a few kids until we left at 12:55. The teachers themselves have to lock up the gate and ALL of the kids have to clear out of the school right away otherwise they’d get locked in. We missed the normal bus that stops at the school so we had to walk to ___ to catch the bus. This one didn’t have a TV.
I got off the bus at 1:34 and I still had to go home, eat, pack, walk to the grocery store for a gallon of water and granola bars, and be at the travel place at 2. I asked the Tawaniese kid if he could go for me to the grocery store because I was running late. Instead he sat their as I ate and didn’t move. He didn’t want to go there alone so I was trying to have him save us time and go there. Something was lost in translation because he said he’d go for me and then just sat there. I told him I was gonna run and to just meet me there. He insisted to come with me. Once we reached the intersection of the grocery store I told him one last time that Id meet him there because the travel agency was 3 blocks away. Finally he agreed to go on his own. I managed to get my gallon of water, granola bars, pineapple off a street vendor and get there all before 2.
TRAVELING TO SEMUC CHAMPEY
There were all kids there I didn’t know ,but all from La Union. It was funny because I was the one that organized the trip and just asked some randoms to come and they all brought their friends so it ended up being a group of 11 on the trip. There were two 18 year old girls from Quebec; 3 college students from Michgan who were Free Baptists; 1 guy from California who was 25 and going to medical school in the fall--He was a jewish persian that was born in Iran; a 20 year old and 17 year old brother and sister from North Carolina; 19 year old who graduated high school in 2009 who did a 5th year of high school in Chile and now goes to Brown; and 33 year old Chi-Chan from Tawain. Quite the crowd.
We left Antigua at 2:20 and arrived in Lanqin at 11:20 with a little over an hour of stops. We stopped at a gas station where I bought an icecream bar and jelly beans. We also stopped in Coban at a mall. We all ate at Pollo Campero. I had lasagna because Paty always has it when she goes there and I split Tangas with Candice. Tangas are basically little calzones without sauce in them that you dip in sauce. It was a little bit of a disaster because we were supposed to be in and out in 30 minutes but I didn’t get my food until 5 mintues before we were supposed to be in the car, which was a 5 minute walk. So I ate my tangas and took the lasagna to go. It wasn’t bad, but there was nothing great about it. It was the first time in a long time I had stringy melted cheese. Usually its dry and not normal. The drive was a little bit on the painful side because the seats weren’t comfortable and the last 45 minutes we probably were going 20 mph because the road was SO bumpy. It also was really hard to sleep because the roads were so windy.
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