A view of Xela

Momostenango

Here is a picture of my Guatemalan friends in front of their house in Momostenango. Juanita, Blandy, and Eddie, the happy siblings. Juanita, Eddie, a couple other students, and I stay with the same family in Xela. Eddie and Juanita attend a colegio, high school, near our house in Xela. I really enjoyed the Saturday while I was visiting their community and the anniversary celebration of their church youth group.


The rolling countryside with parcelas of maize. There are houses scattered along the dirt road running just nearby.

Mas desde Xela

Things have been going really well here. I´ve been really busy this week with some good social activities and adventures. I´m meeting so many interesting gringoes (foreigners) through the school and other spanish schools that it is hurting my spanish learning. (-; However I´m enjoying it. There are a lot of college students from the states who are here for a few weeks to study spanish. We went out salsa dancing a couple times last week. I have fallen in love with dancing salsa and merengue and regatone. I was fortunate to get paired up wednesday night with a girl who is a dance major who helped me with the steps and really made me look good dancing. I hope to keep learning more pasos de salsa.

I am starting to find a pretty good rhythm here. I want to start spending more time studying. I just need to find a little more quiet space for it. Fortunately this morning I was able to find a quiet restaurant to study with some good tacos too.

There is plenty of noise in the house where I live. There are a bunch of us in the family, and I´m happy to have connected really well with my host family. I really enjoy being with them. There is the mother Yudith, her sister Myra, Myra´s son Diego of 2 years, Yudith´s son Gorge and his wife Rita. They have two sons around 8 or ten years Hector and Gorge. There are now three of us gringos from the U.S. studying spanish, and five guatemalan high school students. The guatemalan students are wild with adolescent energy, and I enjoy joking around with them. Our house is something like a hotel with so many people but with much more camaraderie. I had some trouble adjusting to the noise in the house, but I´m getting more used to it. There are also lots of roosters crowing in the morning, dogs barking at night, and motorcycles, music, and trucks blaring through the day. I like to say the dogs rule the night and the roosters rule the morning. Xela is definitely a busy place, but I am really grateful for my family here.

The food is pretty tasty overall, but for my appetite the portions at meals are little too small. We eat a lot of corn tortillas and tamalitos and lots of sweet bread along with black beans usually pureed like soup, some rice, a tiny bit of chicken or meat, soups, a few potatoes and carrots and cilantro, eggs for breakfast sometimes, cornflakes other times. We don´t get a whole lot of protein though. Over my first weekend I felt like I was starving all weekend and didn´t feel too good because of it. Now I´m supplementing with extra bread and a bowl of imported all fiber kelloggs cereal before lunch, so I´m not talking about food during the whole 5 hours of my class in the afternoon. (-;

Of course part of my rhythm is finding time to stretch. I have a good rhyme for it with my teacher (though I found out it isn´t quite correct in spanish it´s still amusing). ¡Un techo por estrecho! I am doing that a lot during my classes because we are sitting so much.

For my first four days in Xela I wasn´t feeling too great because of the noise, lack of food, a broken and cold shower, and I needed to exercise, but finally some of those things started to change with a fixed and warm shower, and a good 20 minute run for exercise on Tuesday last week (sucking air like a dog at 8000 feet). I´m adjusting to the noise in the mornings by going to bed early the night before, getting a little extra food outside of meals, and finding time to dance salsa. Also the weather has gotten warmer and dryer since the rain over the weekend when I first arrived. A storm from a hurricane had been dumping on us. It now rains regularly in the afternoon for a short time, but not all day.

Soon I will post a little about the Fuentes Georginas hot baths, visiting Momostenango with some of the Guatemalan students, and climbing the nearby Santa Maria Volcán with some great pictures too!

Hasta Luego, Joe

Llegue cuidamente en Guatemala

I arrived safely in Guatemala around midnight on Tuesday. As soon as I checked in for the flight my connection changed from Houston, Texas to Mexico City. I was surprised by the change but just went along for the ride. The only problem I had was finding how to change terminals in the airport in Mexico City. After asking four different people I was able to find the train between terminals. When I arrived in Guatemala I was really happy to find Padre Noe waiting for me at the airport.

The guys in Guatemala are great. They are very warm and friendly and welcoming. I am surprised by how much Spanish I can understand and communicate. However it is really challenging to try to speak and understand spanish all day long. I know that I will learn a lot though and be speaking more and more spanish in no time.

Tomorrow I travel to Xela or Quetzaltenango to meet the family who I will live with while I go to spanish school. I am excited and a little nervous about traveling the road to Xela. It will be a good adventure riding the bus. I´m very thankful that I have been with my religious community for the beginning of my time in Guatemala. They have helped me a lot in starting to get to know Guatemala and Guatemaltecos (Guatemalans).

Hasta Luego y Dios de Bendiga (Until later and God Bless), Joe

Pilgrimage

Tuesday I embark on a new journey. I travel to Guatemala for 9 weeks this summer. I will learn Spanish, get to know the culture, and meet some of our missionaries there. I'm looking forward to a powerful experience. Please keep me in your prayers.