Thursday, February 20, 2014

Leisure In and Around San Pedro

With classes at Cooperativa Language School being the focus of our weekdays, we fill in the remaining chunks of our weekdays with kid-friendly activities and the few errands we need to do locally.  Visiting la cancha (the public basketball court) in the center of town is an almost-daily routine.  Often Baxter and Atticus start a pick-up game of basketball at a hoop on the side of the basketball court while another group of kids is playing a half-court game on one of the main hoops.  To boot, during the busier times there are up to three soccer games transpiring simultaneously in the same space.  The chaos seemed crazy at first and though we still get beaned by the occasionally errant soccer ball, we’ve learned to take it all in stride just as the locals do when they pass through la cancha area to get from the market to the park.

But the majority of our leisure comes on the weekends when we have a break from our Spanish lessons.  Baxter and Atticus have routinely started their Saturdays with basketball practice run by our host Mauricio.  An hour of drills is followed by 30 minutes of scrimmages.  Our boys excitedly don their red or yellow bibs and put into practice what they’ve learned.
Baxter represents the red team as Coach Mauricio looks on.

On the first weekend, we explored a bit around town but also enjoyed a visit to Playa Dorada—a local small beach—via horseback.

A horse for each of us.
Though the tour group we chose for the horseback tour was recommended via online reviews, we were a little disappointed when the tour operator passed us off to our “guide” who got us on horses and then passed us off to a teenager who rode his bike or walked along side us for the duration of the horseback ride.  The boys were quite amused with their first real horseback ride even as Shelly was a bit terrified leading the way through the narrow streets alongside motorcycles and tuk-tuks and then the rocky path up the final hill.
The boys left their steeds atop the hill and ran down to the beach.

The beach was narrow but that didn’t stop the boys from having a great time digging in the black sand and discovering shells.  Evidently, the water level of the lake is a few feet higher than it used to be which means most of the beaches (and some houses) around the lake are underwater.

A fun break on the horseback tour.
A week later, we took our first voyage across the lake in a shuttle boat destined for the biggest town on Lake Atitlan: Panajachel.  As the boat only leaves the dock when it has 12 or more paying passengers aboard, we were glad to only wait a few minutes both going and returning.  The 30-minute ride across the lake was scenic and especially enjoyable for our boys.

Shelly and the boys pose on the dock in Panajachel.
Beautiful way to traverse the lake.
Panajachel is the most tourist-oriented town on the lake thanks to its relative proximity to Guatemala City and ease of driving access.  In retrospect it might have made more sense for us to drive to Panajachel and then board the shuttle boat to San Pedro upon our initial arrival in Guatemala rather than the harrowing drive circumnavigating the lake.

While in Panajachel, we briefly visited the famed Calle de Santander touristy strip of street vendors and enjoyed a meal at an outdoor cafe.   But the majority of our time we spent at a beautiful hotel enjoying the pool, trampoline, and even some television in the room.  Boys were excited to watch New Hampshire's Bode Miller claim a medal in olympic skiing while we watched.  A truly hot shower with strong water pressure seemed like a luxury.
View of Santiago and San Pedro volcanoes from near the hotel.
A bit more luxurious than our daily digs.

On upcoming weekends, we're entertaining other types of leisure. Paragliding. Zip-line tours.  Yoga classes.  Volcano hikes.  Boat tours to other lake towns.  Or perhaps we travel a bit further to Antigua or another Guatemalan destination for a couple days.  What would you do with your leisure time if you were here?  Whatever we do, it can only start after Saturday morning basketball practice!

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Hablamos Español (un poco)

Five days a week, our family snakes through the corridors between shops and houses to arrive at Cooperativa Language School.  As you might guess from the name, this school is a cooperative and values immersion as an enriching learning tool.
The school grounds with "classrooms" dotting the perimeter.

From 2:00 to 5:00 on weekday afternoons, the four of us sit down with our respective teachers.  Baxter and Atticus have teachers who specialize in elementary education.  
Faustina and Atticus.
Lina and Baxter.

Learning can take the form of arts and crafts, flash cards, games, or even counting while playing soccer with a teacher.  The boys seem especially astute at naming household objects, colors, animals, and numbers.  Given that our mode of education for the boys in the U.S. was a non-traditional life-learning approach, this is the first form of “institutional” education our boys have received.

The two adults in our family get occasional flash cards, but no arts and crafts or soccer.  Workbooks, conversation practice, and even daily homework!  With one 20 minute coffee and snack break, the three-hour session often leaves our brains a bit tired after so much exercise.
Delia and Shelly.

Clarita and Marshall.

Last week, we joined our teachers on an outing to bring food to three extremely poor families  in San Pedro.  Each family situation was unique, but equally tragic.  It’s likely the four of us in our family benefited more from meeting these families and appreciating their situations than the families themselves benefited from the bags of groceries we delivered.  Though not a required outing, we’re glad the school offered us the opportunity for this type of cultural immersion.  
Teachers holding boys' hands on our walk to deliver food to needy families.

Despite the tale of misadventure that resulted from miscommunication with the language school regarding our lodging arrangements, we’ve been tickled with the instruction we’ve received and the host family the language school paired us with.  And the cost is outrageous.  


For three hours of individualized instruction for five days we pay $90 US per person.  That comes out to $6/hr.  Three meals a day for six days (Sundays we’re on our own for meals) plus lodging only sets us back $210 US for the whole family.  So that puts our total weekly cost for our four-person family at $570 US.  Add a little more for Sunday meals and incidentals, and that’s our cost of living (and learning) in San Pedro—no extra charge for the daily sun and warmth!

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Lifestyles of the Not-So-Rich But Famous

In popularity, basketball is second only to soccer in Guatemala.  Some would argue it’s second to none.  In a night sky filled with stars, Pablo Mauricio Garcia Sajquiy is Guatemala’s brightest basketball star in its favorite constellation.  He has played on the national champion basketball team several years in a row and hopes to win again in December.  Everyone knows him as Mauricio Garcia.  We know him as our host in San Pedro.

In Life in the Home of Our Guatemalan Host Family, I briefly introduced our host family before spending most of the post writing about the modest home in which it lives.  Over meals, we’re gradually learning the stories of the family members.

There’s not enough money in basketball for Mauricio’s hobby to be a source of income for the family.  No endorsements.  No TV contracts.  No revenues from ticket sales to cover any more than facilities and equipment.  Mauricio’s day job is as a full-time school-teacher.  On weekdays, he alternates between schools in neighboring towns teaching a variety of subjects.  On Saturday mornings he offers well-attended, free basketball instruction to local kids at the nearby outdoor court.
Mauricio gathers the youngest kids for the start of Saturday basketball practice.
All told, Mauricio likely brings in about $5,000 per year in income and is the breadwinner for the family.  In a discussion of politics, economics, and culture he told me that he offers basketball instruction not to make the kids better players (though that is a fringe benefit) but to establish rapport with local kids who can be influenced to bring positive change to the community.  Similarly, his chosen profession of teaching is not easy nor high-paying but is what he feels is the best platform for helping educate the future of the broader community.

No less community-minded and certainly no less progressive, Mauricio’s wife Mayda is highly conscious of how her daily decisions impact the family and community.  She has shared with us how she selects the vegetables from the farmers at the market to ensure family health and encourage sustainable farming practices.  Though as a young child she ate many meals consisting of nothing more than salted corn tortillas and coffee, she has a robust appreciation for nutrition.  We are benefiting from an almost exclusively whole food diet heavy in fruits and vegetables.  
Mayda at the edge of the kitchen.
Though food-related chores occupy the majority of Mayda’s day, she also washes the household’s laundry by hand, cleans the house, and helps raise her still-nursing 2 year-old daughter Aweex (pronounced Avesh).  On a pie chart of her time spent in a week, relaxation and entertainment would be almost imperceptible slices.

Mayda’s mother-in-law Magdalena shares in almost all Mayda’s chores, despite being in her seventies.  Magdalena also participates actively in San Pedro’s catholic church. She smiles at the relative modernity around her, but holds to some of her own traditions such as eating all her meals next to the wood-burning hearth.
Magdalena making tortillas on the hearth she so often sits beside.
The patriarch in the family is Magdelena’s husband Santos.  If Mauricio is the family’s breadwinner, Santos is the family’s “tortillawinner.”  Santos farms a plot of leased land an hour’s uphill walk from the house.  He raises just enough corn to feed the family (and its guests) for the year.  The corn is used almost solely for making tortillas.  Though he helps with other family chores, growing and processing the corn by hand is his focus.
Santos gives us a tour of the farmland near where he'll plant corn next week.
Despite his mundane contribution to the family, Santos is as famous locally as his son.  Completing only two years of school as a youngster, Santos is self-educated largely through books.  Thanks to a donation of books from a generous friend, Santos has been pivotal in building San Pedro’s library.  He has served as the town’s volunteer librarian for 20 years.  On the streets, he’s often greeted by his nickname: El Profesor.  At first wary of our ability to navigate San Pedro’s nameless streets and alleys, we were comforted when we learned that all we ever needed to do in this town of 13,000 was to say “Take me to the home of Santos (or Mauricio) Garcia” and we’d be ushered straightaway.

Of Mayan descent like most of the town’s residents, the Garcias' first language is Tzutujil. Spanish is the second language spoken by all in the house, but really only mastered by Mayda and Mauricio.  English is a third language spoken respectably by both Mayda and Mauricio.


And clearly, generosity is a language spoken fluently by our host family.  In a way, it is what has made them locally famous.

Monday, February 10, 2014

Life in the Home of Our Guatemalan Host Family

Though our arrival into San Pedro and to our host family’s home was under less than optimal conditions (chronicled in Nothing adVentured, Nothing Gained Part 1), we now realize how lucky we are to be hosted by the Garcia family.

The three-story cinder block home we stay in likely totals about 1000 square feet and is owned by septuagenarians Santos and Magdalena Garcia.  The Garcias live in one bedroom on the first floor and their son Mauricio, daughter-in-law Mayda, and two year-old granddaughter Aweex (pronounced Avesh) live in the adjacent bedroom.  There is a small stall underneath the stairs that contains a toilet and an overhead spigot that serves as the cold shower for the 5 first-floor residents.

The second floor is our domain.  Two bedrooms are connected by a bathroom.  

Though tiny, our bathroom is superior to the one on the first floor in that it has a sink, the shower is separated from the toilet, and the shower head has an electric (!) heating element that provides lukewarm water.  Our setup is different from what we’re used to at home, but is plush by Guatemalan standards.

The third floor is the most communal area.  Mayda performs magic in a 10x10 eat-in kitchen doing most of her cooking over a stick-burning hearth.  
Though she is more fortunate than most of her neighbors in that she also has a propane stove-top, she uses it sparingly to preserve the gas stored in the canister.  We’ll write a separate post about food in Guatemala, but here we’ll note that she makes from scratch (meaning dried corn cobs) over 100 tortillas each day using the stick-burning hearth.  We’re growing quite accustomed to the clapping sound of tortilla-making.

The rest of the third floor is a roofless, low-walled verandah.  It’s here that the family strips the corn kernels from the cobs and sorts them before boiling them in the kitchen.  Since the kitchen sink is also located outside on the verandah, it’s also where the dishes are washed.  This sunny location is conducive to drying laundry and firewood.  Barrels of water and bags of corn are stored here too.  We’re used to stopping here first in the morning to greet Santos who is usually sorting corn kernels in a bin on his lap.

As Mauricio explained to me, Guatemalans fall into three different strata: wealthy, poor, and extremely poor.  There is no middle class.  The Garcias fall into the second bucket: poor.  But that hasn’t stopped them from being extremely generous with us.  Their house is better than many of their neighbors’.  But it’s their cheery dispositions, generosity, and general kindness that we most appreciate.  We feel wealthy sharing in their “riches.”

Friday, February 7, 2014

Nothing adVentured, Nothing Gained Part 2

In Part 1 of this story, I shared the crazy way in which we arrived in San Pedro La Laguna.  If you haven’t yet read that tale, read it here before going on.  And then I hope you enjoy the most redemptive parts of the tale here in Part 2.

Our first night’s sleep in Guatemala was punctuated with barking dogs and eventually roosters crowing.  Atticus and I slept well in our bed though Shelly and Baxter shared a rough night in theirs.  Daylight was welcome.

We climbed the stairs from the second floor where our beds are located to the third floor where the kitchen is.  To everyone’s delight, our hostess Mayda had prepared pancakes for our welcome breakfast.  We all ate well and then stepped through the kitchen door out onto the roof-top patio for this view.

Soon after breakfast, Mayda walked us through snaking alleyways and corridors to drop us off at our Spanish school.  We discovered the source of the lodging misunderstanding and chalked it up to a matter of idioms lost in email translation.  We briefly used the WiFi at the school to let our parents know we’d arrived safely (sparing the details of Part 1) and then set out to find the Hotel Sakcari where we were supposed to have spent the previous night and the subsequent six.

Shelly and I decided we would continue our stay with the host family and would cancel our hotel reservation.  We had to forfeit the $50 deposit, but in exchange the proprietor showed us to the room that would have been ours and said we had a few hours to use the grounds before check out time.  And use them we did!
Hammock on the hotel lawn.

Paddling Lake Atitlan beneath San Pedro volcano using hotel's kayak.

Sure beats the ice storm back home!

Bliss!

We capped off our brief stay with hot showers before returning to our new home-away-from-home for a late lunch.  And then we took the one-minute walk through the market to the local basketball court in the center of town.  Baxter and Atticus got pretty excited about our proximity to this place where kids of all ages play basketball and soccer throughout the day.  In Guatemala, students go to school either in the morning or in the afternoon always leaving many kids free. 
2 on 2 basketball with local kids.
What a turnaround from our confused arrival in the darkness the night prior!  It would have been easy for any one of us to get very down on our initial experience.  I’m especially impressed by how resilient Baxter and Atticus have been.  Good food, kind people, beautiful views, kayaking, swimming, basketball with local kids, and heaps of sunshine warming the air—we think we can work with these building blocks to have an exceptional time while in San Pedro studying Spanish.  But it took quite a journey to get here.  Perhaps it’s true: nothing adventured, nothing gained.

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Nothing adVentured, Nothing Gained! Part 1

The story of our arrival in San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala has all the necessary elements for an adventure: expectations and surprises, anxiety and relief, harrowing drives and beautiful vistas, sickness and recovery, embarrassment and cultural misunderstanding, inky evening shadows and sunburn-inducing rays.  But most importantly, this arrival story has a happy ending.  This is Part 1.

All went well on our 3 flights from Boston to Guatemala City.  And we were pleased with the ease of immigration and customs.  As we exited the airport, we quickly spotted a man with a sign for Shelly and Marshall.  He introduced himself in English as Antonio—a teacher at the language school—and quickly put us at ease.  Before long, we were introduced to our Spanish-speaking driver Walter and boarded the van that would take Antonio and us the expected 4 hours to San Pedro.

Packed with souped-up school buses, cars, lorries, and motorbikes, the streets around Guatemala city were hot and slow-going even if cheerfully decorated. 
An old school bus converted to municipal transport in Guatemala City.
Family vehicle.
Armed with M-16s.
As we gawked at the sights and the passing vehicles, we should have seen that Baxter wasn’t feeling very good.  Instead, we chalked his malaise up to lack of sleep and a long day of travel.  When he vomited in the van, we realized he was carsick.

We took a break at a rest area outside the city where we all got some fresh air, cold drinks, and some food.  It was there we learned that Antonio’s son was being hospitalized for appendicitis and that Antonio would be dropped off at a bus stop where he could catch a bus to the hospital.  Now well outside the city limits Walter pressed the gas pedal further to the floor for Antonio’s sake, but lost ground when we had to stop a second time for Baxter to empty his stomach into a plastic shopping bag—after he had partially emptied it on his and Shelly’s clothes, the van seat, and the floor.  With obvious litter strewn along the side of the road, I was tempted to add our leaking shopping bag to the landscape but ultimately felt compelled to bring it back in the van with us for the journey.

Peaking above 120 km/h we successfully hustled to get Antonio on the departing bus just in the nick of time.  From here we could see signs for Lake Atitlan—the body of water on which San Pedro sits.  We were hopeful that we were getting very close to our destination.  

Soon we turned off of what had been relatively well-maintained, wide roads onto a choppy street that wasn’t wide enough for two cars and a pedestrian to all pass abreast.  Breaks in the road often spanned 6 or 7 feet at a depth of 6 to 8 inches.  The word “pothole” seems woefully inadequate.  At other points, the paved road altogether disappeared for a few hundred feet.  We descended a series of roughly 20 switchbacks into the first of three towns we would drive through along the lake just as night was falling.

Somewhere after leaving the well-paved road, Baxter involuntarily pumped his stomach a final time as the van drove on.  Atticus peacefully slept through the ordeal even as the hairpins jarred loose the contents of the plastic bags on the floor.  

Perhaps for a break from the vulgar, this is a good spot to mention that my proficiency in Spanish is less than first grade level despite online tutorials.  The boys combine an even more basic understanding with 2 helpings of enthusiasm to achieve similar conversational effect.  Shelly is our resident linguist having a number of years of Spanish study in school.  But the practical application of that study will take a few days or weeks to iron out.

Our driver announced our arrival in the town of San Pedro La Laguna and out the window greeted passersby by name.  “Cinco minuto” he estimated our remaining drive time.  We were relieved to count the minutes on one hand and intrigued by the bustling streets and lit-up merchant stalls in the center of town.  Walter backed the van up a cobblestone alley and parked.  

“I guess we must be near our hotel,” I said to Shelly as the driver got out and opened the lift gate at the back of the van.  We pulled together our belongings from the van seats (yes, plastic shopping bags included) and went to the back of the van where a woman and a young man greeted us and took our two larger pieces of luggage.  The young man disappeared around a corner.  We followed the woman around the same corner and then into an unlit, 3-foot wide passageway between two buildings.  Turn left.  Down a few steps.  Turn right.  Up two stairs through a doorway.  We’re in.

But where are we?  There are no signs indicating Hotel Sakcari like we’re expecting.  Just the woman we followed, an old man, an old woman, and a baby are in the interior of what might be a boarding house or perhaps a home.  We’re introduced to the people in the house and then shown to the room upstairs.

Though glad to see our luggage upstairs, I quickly notice that this is not the hotel room we reserved (king bed with adjacent twin bed).  Instead it’s two separate rooms each with a full bed.  I’m not feeling good at all about the kids sleeping in a separate room from us.  And then that’s when it dawns on me.

This is not the hotel we have reserved for the first week of our stay in Guatemala.  This must be the family with whom we are planning to stay after our first week.  Oh boy.  How do we straighten this one out?  Or do we?  As our host family leaves us in peace in our rooms, Shelly and I quickly confer and decide it’s best to at least spend the night here and then sort things out in the morning.  Perhaps we can find the language school that made the arrangements with the driver and the host family and have the school help sort it out for us.


But for now, we have two beds.  We have a small trash can in which to deposit our leaking mess.  We have seemingly trustworthy smiling faces.  Despite this twist of events, despite our lack of language command, despite our disappointment in not having a WiFi connection to research what went wrong or to let stateside family know our status, despite a carsick child—we have each other.  And for our first night in a foreign land, that’s enough for us.
The following morning, Atticus revisited the passageway--with light this time!

Monday, February 3, 2014

On Our Way

The day is finally here!  It's February 3rd and we'll land in Guatemala today starting a new chapter in our adventure. 

We're exhausted by the final push to clear out of our house (not to mention the 3:00 AM wake up to catch our 5:05 AM flight).  Despite having months to prepare, packing up the house was a challenge that kept us busy until the last minute.  The last time we packed up like this was 10 years ago when we moved from an apartment to our first house.  This time we sorted through our things to decide if they:

  1. could be given away or sold,
  2. would be needed later in our sabbatical (domestic travels),
  3. were worth keeping until after our sabbatical, or
  4. would go with us to Central America

Here's how that fourth pile wound up:



It will feel good to have very limited things with us as we travel.  Sure, there'll be occasional things we wish we had with us, but we expect the overall feeling to be freeing.

The process of preparing to leave our home also reminded us how fortunate we are to have great friends locally.  Friends who have been willing to let us store stuff at their houses, friends who have helped stage our home for sale, friends who have blanket offered to do anything we need before or after we leave.  We weren't expecting to need to take everyone up on their offers, but it seems we needed the help after all!  Thanks to you, friends, for what you've done and what some of you are continuing to do for us while we're away.

The next post you get will be from Guatemala!  You're always welcome to leave comments or questions for us right here below the blog, but if you want to reach out to us in other ways you can reach Marshall via email at sustainablelife@gmail.com and Shelly at shellystritz@msn.com and we'll respond with a handful of other ways you can stay in touch.

Time to board the plane!