Going to Church

At Harding the topic of being a Christian and believing in God, but not going to church seemed to come up alot. There were alot of reasons: I go to chapel and Bible class everyday anyway, they´re too big and I don´t feel involved, I don´t get anything out of it, it´s too hypocritical etc. It kind of surprised me to hear some of the same (and to me very American) arguments come up here. Francisco and I were debating church and essentially organized religion. He said that it´s believing in God and being a good Christian and living your life accordingly that matter. The church is hypocritical, doesn´t really promote change, and is essentially the opium of the people. I agree with most of what he said. The churches here and in the States have alot of problems. I agree that it´s not about having an expensive building and an established hierarchy, and telling people things are bad, but not doing anything to change them. The difference is in what you do with that. To me, that´s all the more reason we need to be proactive in the church and work to improve it. If it´s not lining up with God´s desire for his church, we need to change it, not abandon it.
It´s like human rights here in Guatemala, it´s a pretty messed up situation which we could decide to have nothing to do with. But instead of giving up on it because of it´s problems, there are people working to try to make things better, even if it´s a slow messy problem. The point is, you can´t do it alone, you´ve got to have support and other people helping you. That´s one thing that´s so important about church, people meeting and working together. Just as believing in the importance of human rights (and even trying to improve them, but doing it alone) isn´t going to change anything, so believing in God and even doing what´s right (but doing it alone) isn´t the way to change the world. We need help and support and the church provides that.
I feel obligated to mention at this point that for all my talk about the importance of going to church, I´ve only actually gone twice since I got to Guatemala. Just wanted to put that out there in the open...

More on Apathy

Si no tienes nada que vale la muerte tampoco tienes nada que vale la vida.

If you don´t have anything worth dying for, you don´t have anything worth living for.

People have occasionally accused me of being a perfectionist, and this isn´t true. My problem is, I expect people to want to be perfect. I expect people to never settle for ¨good enough¨but to always want to do better and find ways to improve things, not just themselves but with everything in life. It´s naive I know, and yet I can´t shake this conviction. For this reason, I cannot handle apathy of any kind. I cannot understand it and I cannot forgive it or look past it. So I realized yesterday that I really dislike Guatemala. It´s the most apathetic place I´ve ever been and I can´t get past it. There are other problems here, but we´ll just stick with one for today.

Anyways, as to the title, yesterday I was not up for the fight. I am ashamed to say that I stood back and watched. At the same time, I would make the same decision if I had to do it again. And I hate it. The other teacher and I were walking to the bus stop yesterday and came up on a really bad fight between 4 guys. And I stood at the bridge and let Pablo (who is 20 years old and about my size) take on the situation alone. He managed to difuse the situation, possibly saving one guy´s life. It kills me that I did nothing. And that I tried to talk Pablo out of walking me to the bus stop in which case, no one would have helped the guy. I understand the other two women who were watching from a distance, I did the same. But I cannot understand the (adult male) shop owners who stood around watching. Especially in a community that´s tiny, and where everyone knows each other. I didn´t find out until later that even though they were significantly bigger than me, they were actually teenagers. But the shop owners would have known these boys, why wouldn´t they step in? I hate that as a female, I cannot step into this situation. And as a result, I become the very thing I most despise (and cannot forgive) in other people.

Carnaval and Teaching

Yesterday was Carnaval, otherwise known as Mardi Gras. I'd heard alot about Carnaval, the parades, costumes, fairs, and how in Guatemala they have Cascarones which are eggs filled with Confetti, that the kids go around breaking on everyone's heads. So I was excited about seeing my first Carnaval and was talking about it at work. Until my supervisor looked at me with shock and started talking about how erotic it is, that it's really vulgar and there's alot of drinking. Oops. To be honest, I thought it was unfair, because while that may be true of countries like Brazil, it's completely different and very mild in Guatemala, which is obviously what I would have been referring to. Anyways, I went to Calvario in the afternoon to check out all the activities, and even had a cascaron cracked on my head. It's most lively at night but I didn't go back. They say it gets kinda crazy and that the older kids fill the eggs with random things like flour, or just use real eggs. Which would've been fine except they are also known to use grosser things like urine, and tend to target foreigners. No thanks.


So I survived my first day of teaching today (not including random improv lessons in English). I know bigger words in Spanish than 12 year old Guatemalans, wahoo... It went pretty well. Except for the part where I had to improv the second class. We (or apparently just I) had an understanding that I would teach Science on Wednesdays and Social Studies on Thursdays. As if I wasn't stressed out enough about teaching in Spanish, I had to wing a 30 minute class on Social Investigation. I had a great stall strategy... make them participate and get a discussion going. But they wouldn't speak, I had to drag every word out of them. Also, I somehow managed to go from teaching 3 lectures a week (1 in English), to being responsible for 4 entire classes including coming up with homework, tests, and giving them grades. And they gave away my English class, so it will all be in Spanish. And it went from being a 3 week commitment to 4 weeks (they had to cancel the week they were going to be studying agriculture). Wow, I guess it really didn't go all that well. I mean, it seemed like it did at the time. They like me, and I covered the material I was supposed to cover...

Fuentes Georginas and Fellow Travellers

So I met a couple Canadian girls on the bus to Xela yesterday. Actually what happened was they stored their luggage underneath the bus, then somewhere managed to miss the bus when it left the station. So I felt bad for them, and talked to the driver and attendant. They seemed mostly unconcerned, but then another passenger asked me what the problem was, and he had more success in convincing the driver to wait about a block or so away until the girls caught up. Anyways, we got to talking on the 5 hour bus drive back to Xela, and ended up hanging out today. We went to the Fuentes Georginas and soaked in the hot springs for awhile. It was a nice relaxing day after a long week.
Travelling is such a different world, it´s crazy how open people are and how people hook up and become friends. It´s out of necessity, but it´s nice being able to start a conversation with random people and feel like you actually get to know them. You meet people, and you´d think they new each other before the trip and came together, when they´ve actually just met the day before. People tend to be way more open and accepting, and I absolutely love hearing everyone´s view on random things, you learn so much and you meet people from all over the world. Some people are just way out there, but that too just makes for great stories.

Other Highlights

Tikal
We went on the sunrise tour to Tikal, which was amazing! In order to go, we had to get up at 3 in the morning for the sketchiest trip ever... some stories just can´t be written, they have to be told. We just barely made it in time for the sunrise, we were sprinting up the stairs at Temple 4, but it was an incredible experience watching the sun rise over 2 other Mayan temples and hearing the jungle come alive with birds and howler monkeys that sound like lions. The architecture is incredible, and they´ve only excavated 20% of the site. We got to climb 4 of the temples.

Rio Dulce
The town itself is not that special, but it´s on Lake Izabal, which is beautiful and much warmer than Xela! Our hotel consisted of little cabana/bungalows, and everything was up on boardwalks. It was way back in a cove off the lake, so you felt like you were completely isolated out in the jungle, but still had relatively easy access to the town. We had little miniature canoes that you could take out to the dock in the main part of the lake. We saw our first tarantula, which they caught and kept under a margarita glass at the bar.

Finca Paraiso (Paradise Farm)
Definitely a highlight of Guatemala, Finca Paraiso is about an hour from Rio Dulce and has a hot waterfall! The pool itself was pretty cool, but there was steam coming from the waterfall, and you could swim up to some rocks and sit under it. Yup, my second truly hot shower in Guatemala was a waterfall. I´m not sure why it´s so salt, someone said it had something to do with the sulfur content?

Livingston
It´s a small town on the ocean, with nothing truly special, but ít´s the trip there and back that rocks. We took a 2 hour boat tour down the river, stopping to see a Spanish castle from the 1500´s, one of the bird islands, the Grafiti Wall (supposedly from the 1700´s but which can only be proved to go back to the 1950´s) and a couple caves, one of which was a natural sauna.

Guatemala City
Normally nothing special in Guate, but as we were driving back from the bus station, we noticed that Volcano Pacaya was erupting. Usually that just means it´s smoking, but this time we actually saw lava!! I´d been thinking about meeting Sabrina in Antigua to hike Pacaya on Saturday, but the lava put an end to those plans.

Semuc Champey

Staying in Coban and visiting Semuc Champey has definitely been the highlight of Guatemala so far. The Lonely Planet doesn't give promising reviews, but it's way better than the highlands! It's cleaner, warmer, and absolutely gorgeous. Beautiful tourqoise pools of water, water falls, underwater caves, it's fantastic! On the way back we stopped at Lanquin to explore the caves there, which were pretty impressive. I wish the pictures could reflect what it was actually like. And our hotel room (which we paid just under $7 each for) actually did have hot water as promised! Most claim they do, but it's really ice cold. It was my first hot shower in a month!!! With the exception of Panajachel, which alternated about every 2 minutes between really hot and really cold. And it had great water pressure too. It's the little things... like my chocolate cheesecake at dinner...
Today we spent 5 1/2 more hours travelling, and we're currently in Flores, a tiny tourist island in the middle of a river with not much going on. I was ready to leave within the first hour of arriving. But from here we'll make a day trip to the Mayan ruins in Tikal tomorrow, before heading towards the coast. The highlight of today was crossing the river by ferry about an hour outside of Flores. It's the only way to get here, and it's a pretty small ferry that carries some pretty large trucks and buses. There was a chicken bus that crossed over with us, and he had to gas it and then slam on the breaks to shove off from shore, then back up so the front end would be light enough to beach on the opposite shore.

Cross Country Journey Day 1

Nothing in Guatemala is ever really certain so if there´s something that absolutely must be done, such as catching your 4AM bus, you have to have several back up plans. After several failed plans and over an hour of work on Thursday night, Friday morning at 3:20 found Katie and me sitting in the front room praying that our taxi driver showed up as scheduled, as our only remaining options involved us walking by ourselves at night, which just isn´t a good idea in Guatemala. The bus station is only a 5 minute drive (or a 15 minute walk without luggage, which Katie has with her since she´s not returning to Xela) so it was rough paying 45Q or $7, but given the alternatives I would´ve paid more if I needed to. Our taxi driver actually showed up on time, and even waited with us until the bus showed up. It's just ironic to me that we paid 45Q to drive 5 minutes to the bus station, and then 45Q for the 5 hour bus drive from xela to guatemala city. We then walked a couple blocks to a different bus station, and got there just in time to catch the bus to Coban, another 5 hour drive. But I´m super excited to get away from Xela for awhile. We visited a coffee farm this afternoon which was pretty neat... This isn´t an exciting entry, but there´s just not much to say about spending 10 hours on a bus...

Screwed up government
So the other day there were hundreds of Mayan peasants lined up around the block of this bank. Guatemala´s been facing a banking crisis, and has had quite a few bankruptcies, but this seemed different so I started asking around about what was going on. I was told that it was the people who had helped out the corrupt government during the Civil War by killing their own people, mostly civilians, including women and children. Now the government is paying them for their service. This is one example of why many people here hate their government. The people I talked to were pretty disgusted about the whole situation, but I did hear one person stand up for them. He claimed that with the extent of the propaganda of the government, and the lack of education, many people (mostly peasants) still aren´t aware of the genocide that took place under Rios Montt, so they thought, and possibly still think, that they were fighting for a worthy cause (ie against Communism). It´s so sad to see that there are still people who naively support someone who was so evil, and that he´s still part of the political scene.

Apathy

In my opinion the worst problem in this country is apathy. Because of apathy, people will stand around watching someone being beaten and do nothing. So violence is accepted, as is corruption, which is unbelievable in this country. The people hide behind ignorance. They don´t want to know the truth beause it's easier not to. Ignorance does not require action or risk. They build walls and don´t want to be involved in anything not directly related to them because it´s safer.
After discussing this issue with local people, I guess I should give a disclaimer. In all fairness, the people have good reason to be apathetic. Most of the leaders and intellectuals were killed during the Civil War. People did speak out and fight for change, and they paid with their lives. Now they´re waiting for a new generation of intellectuals and future leaders to arise. If you ask Guatemalans who they want to win the presidential election, most of them will tell you there isn´t a good candidate. The current president is considered good not because he really changed anything at all, but because he didn't do anything terrible, which is improvement from past presidents.

Worse Super Bowl Party Ever

Yesterday Katie and I went to Tecun, a local sports bar so we could watch the Super Bowl. It was a sad experience. It was dark and smoky with a very small tv that kept freezing, causing us to miss important plays like the Colts first touchdown. Katie and I took a seat at the bar as there were no tables left, and ordered nachos and a chocolate shake. The shake was just chocolate milk, and the nachos consisted of 12 tortilla chips with spaghetti sauce, basil, and parmesan cheese. Didn't Latino people invent nachos?? Then some guy behind the bar tried to feed me a chip, so I took it from him and ate it, and then he just started eating our chips! Not that they were any good, but that's pretty rude! Anyways, we left shortly after and went to Coco Loco's which at least had a larger tv and didn't freeze. It was still pretty sad though. We didn't even get to see any good commercials. And then the Bears lost. What a sad night!
On the way home, we crossed this tiny intersection of 2 one-way streets that had one cop directing traffic, and a bunch supervising the situation. So we were laughing that it took 6 Guatemalan cops to replace a broken traffic light... and then we realized the traffic light wasn't broken. So next time you complain about how your tax dollars are spent, it could be worse.

A spy among us??
This guy I was working with the other day told me that he and my supervisor think this 3rd guy we work with is a military spy. At first I thought he was just messing with me, but he's actually serious. I'm kind of torn between thinking he's completely paranoid, and realizing that with the civil war still so recent, it's somewhat understandable. Anyways, everday at work is an aventure, there's no predicting what's going to happen. We do investigative work as well as educational activities. I feel like I'm just now getting to the point where I have something to contribute, so that makes things much less frustating.