In Flores

Mom and dad et.al left yesterday under some amount of duress. Pippa - or Lil P, as Ive taken to calling her - was sick all night long the night before they left. Poor baby, poor parents. Needless to say, I think everyone was ready to be home.

Nate and I took off yesterday from Guatemala City headed up towards Tikal, site of the Mayan temples. It{s hard to guesstimate driving time in these parts and the map isnt that much help. It all depends on traffic and road conditions. Nate thought it might take 2 days and instead, we got to Flores, about an hour south of Tikal, yesterday afternoon around 4PM. About an 8 hour drive. No traffic, no problems and after so much family time, we didn{t talk much either :) The car, Corazon de Leon, was a trouper and gave us no issues. In fact, i think she went 200 miles on half a tank of gas...

The terrain outside of Guate city looks like Arizona, cactus, dry rolling hills with low scrubby foiliage and some cottonwoods and brighter greenery in the ditches on top of obvious groundwater sources. But then an hour later, those hills are higher and the cottonwoods are interspersed with palm trees. And we saw a pinapple field. I don{t think it ever occured to me how pineapples are grown. The fields look strange, all those prickly pineapple tops poking up thru the ground, looking like some kind of succulent. B8t then its all jungle from there to the coast. The hills are sharply rounded and covered with so much vegetation that its hard to tell how high they actually are. Nate thinks there are probably undiscovered Mayan temples under some of them.

Flores is an "island" or spit of land connected to the mainland and protruding out into Lake Ixabel. We got a hotel overlooking the lake and spent a couple of pleasant late afternoon hours watching the sun set, reading and just hanging out before finding dinner in town. Its a very laid back little village, somewhat reminiscent of Antigua in the brightly painted buildings and cobblestone roads. Lots of tourists, lots of restaurants and hotels and not much else. Good thing we have no expectations except for Tikal.

Were off to Tikal this afternoon and then back for a nap and then the new years eve festivities in town and then off to Tikal in the wee hours to watch the sun rise on new years day. We{re headed straight for the carribean coast tomorrow from Tikal, where well be for the rest of the time Im here in Guate. Ill write more from there

Feliz año everyone!

Odds and ends

On our way back to Guatemala city and then everyone´s going home tomorrow except Nate and I. It´s nice for me because I´ve done the crazy tourist travelling buying spree for the past week, now I have a week to chill out and relax. Our plan is to head to Tikal for new years and then to the Caribbean coast for the rest of the week.

So here´s a little of this and that.

So the Pana Rock café was fun. Typical beachside bar packed from wall to wall with people, loud music and Shakira singing about her hips. Got the chance to do tequila shots with my siblings and discovered that there isn´t a standard recipe for the michelada. The one I had was lemon juice, Tabasco, worchestershire sauce, salt and beer over ice and Bet´s had tomato juice also. Either way, it is a great tropical alternative to the standard umbrella drink.

Chichicastenango. Geez, I´m still recovering from that place. The only reason to go is the market, which covers many many square blocks, enough blocks that you never see all of it. And it´s PACKED with people and goods in every square inch. Sensory overload big time. See my post about the market in Guatemala city and quadruple that on every level. You can stay overnight but mostly people bus in and out from neighboring cities like Panajachel. So at 8AM, you and 11 other people cram into a van built for 6 and drive over the steepest twistiest longest mountain road where buses pass semis on the curves and the cars coming down the mountain automatically hug the edge of the road anticipating 2 or more vehicles coming at them at any given point. At this point you hope you don´t get carsick (we discovered that Pippa gets carsick…) and that your driver hasn´t been drinking (like our drivers in Guatemala city…) An hour and a half later you arrive in chichi with a thousand other travellers and natives, as there are only 2 market days a week and every surrounding town depends on them for goods. Then not only is it crazy and huge and crowded and overwhelming but it closes at 2PM so you are constantly conscious of the fact that you are on a time schedule. Then you pile back into the van and repeat the whole experience in reverse. Then you crawl back to your hotel, collapse on top of your purchases and take a well deserved nap. And that´s chichi!

Panajachel is on the shore of Lake Atitatlan. very touristy, lots of vendors and tons of expats, everyone from the hippies hanging out playing their bongos and selling homemade jewelry to the adorable couple who run the Crossroads café, roast their own coffee and know everyone in town by name. It feels like many other beach towns but without the age and personality of Antigua. I could live in Antigua. I don´t know that I would come back to Panajachel…

overall this trip has been an amazing. A blend of memories and new experiences. Now we´re trying to talk mom and dad into going to Colombia for a Christmas vacation. they are resistent, but we have a couple years to work on them ;)

Navidad in Antigua

Christmas in Antigua, why would you ever go anywhere else?? We went to the biggest most active church in town, La Merced, where the sidewalks were lined with street vendors setting up grills and comals and boiling oil and were making tacos, bunuelos, grilled chicken etc. etc. Everyone in town was milling around, lighting sparklers, eating food, catching up on gossip and waiting for the parade. At 9PM the church bells go completely berserk for several minutes and so begins the parade de los gigantes.

The procession begins with tons of smoky braziers and emerging out of the smoke are lantern bearers carrying stained glass candle lit lanterns and lining up on either side of the sidewalk. Through the corridor they create come los gigantes, people wearing and manipulating giant puppets of various things, mostly huge human heads with uncertain significance. Los gigantes process through the corridor and do a little circular dance on the plaza and then vanish into the church. Then many many more church bells and as the last one fades out, the fireworks start. It´s the kind of fireworks display I have rarely seen, even during 4th of July in the US. 15 to 20 minutes of huge beautiful fireworks over the cathedral, ending in big display and everyone applauding. Then comes a float up the lantern corridor on the back of a pickup truck with an angel holding the baby Jesus and Mary and Joseph behind her. The truck stalls out at the church steps and needs several people to hop out and push it up and then they ceremoniously remove the statues and process into the church and begin the Noche Buena mass.

We left at this point and went and did our own thing at the hotel until midnight when the whole town exploded with fireworks. From the rooftop plaza of the hotel there were fireworks in the air at every quadrant of the city and loud fireworks on the ground in every street in town. Men would run into the street, light the fireworks, cover their ears and run for cover into the doorways until the fireworks were done and then repeat repeat repeat, solid noise and color for the first part of Christmas day. Lorien and I stood on the bench at the plaza and watched the fireworks until they stopped, around 1230AM. This is repeated at noon on Christmas day, which is the official time to kiss and hug everyone you know and wish them a merry Christmas.

Very cool. If I had a chance, I would come back here every year.

A note about bathrooms...

oh, man. Those of you in the US, be grateful for your fully equipped, fully functioning bathrooms. There´s nothing to make you feel like a traveller like a foreign bathroom, be it in Europe or latin America. The major thing, aside from the aforementioned water situation, is that the septic systems in Guatemala date back as far as septic systems go, and they are finicky and don´t tolerate paper of any kind. So you have to remember consciously to throw all paper in the trash not the toilet. Try it, it requires the sort of deliberate thought one doesn´t usually associate with using the bathroom.

But then there are the general vagaries of outlets, fans, showers etc. In Lorien´s and my bathroom in Guate city, our shower didn´t work, or I couldn´t figure out how to make it work the first day. Plus the water pressure was close to nonexistent plus the water was barely warm. Washing my hair, lying flat on my back in the tub, with a dribble of lukewarm water coming out of a faucet set so close to the tub you can barely get your hand between them. That´s a good time. But that was a wonderland compared to the bathrooms in Antigua.

We checked into a hotel, got 4 rooms for the 7 of us, all with doors that open to an outdoor courtyard and each of us with a unique bathroom situation. The first universal issue, for Americans, is that they give you one towel per person. One. Want to dry your hands? Use your one towel. Want to wash your face? You have one towel. Geting out of the shower and tracking water all over the bathroom because there´s nothing on the floor but tile? Well, you have your one towel. Washcloth? Sorry. No lo hay. So there´s water on the floor from the showers, the air is humid so nothing dries and then you walk into your bathroom with shoes on and track dirt everywhere. By 10AM you¨re willing to sacrifice your one towel because the floor looks so grotesque and hold out hope for your next towel.

And then there are the outlets. Or lack thereof. None in the bathroom where the only mirror resides and only one in the room. In my room it was right near Lorien´s bed who was sleeping. So I took my hair dryer into Nate´s room and dried my hair looking into the blank reflective screen of his laptop because the mirror was too far away. Necessity and mothers, etc. We spent the rest of the three days roaming between the 4 rooms looking for a free outlet. Pippa´s sleeping, can´t use Bet´s room. Lorien´s sleeping, can´t use my room. Nate´s using his laptop, can´t use Nate´s room. Mom??

Then there are the toilets. Bet and Chris had the most interesting toilet placement. It was overlapped by the sink, i.e. set so close together. So you had to slide in to sit on it and then the sink was in your lap. Better not drop anything or have trouble getting up because youre going to end up in the sink. If you sat on it sideways, you had the shut the door first and then wedge your knees against it and the toilet paper holder, one of the big industrial sized ones that sticks out from the wall about 6 inches, was directly at your back. So it was a contortionist act to get some and then another contortionist act to find the trash can.

Mom and dad´s toilet was so close to the wall the toilet paper holder made you hunch your shoulders and sit at a slight slant. By comparison, Lorien´s and mine was positively roomy. Except that our bathroom door was a straight shot from the front door so you just hoped both were closed when you got out of the shower because otherwise you could be looking into the surprised face of a fellow traveller trying to enjoy his breakfast café in the courtyard.

Oh, and mom and dad´s bathroom light switch was in the shower. ON the shower wall with the water and such. Electrocution, anyone?? And now we´re in a hotel where there are no doorknobs. You have to lock all the doors with a key to get them to stay shut.

But all joking aside, the thing that makes all of this so much better is that our hotel staff have been universally amazing. if it is within their power, they will do their best to make it so. Thus, the water, paper, towels and toilets all just become an amusing story. At least I know I´m going home to my own bathroom where as this is their life, right?

Oh, and we went out last night and visited the Pana Rock Cafe (like Hard Rock, only much different). More about that later…

Noche buena

Well, I edited the last post and may have deleted parts of it. that sucks...

At any rate, we're now in Antigua, the traveler's hub of central america and one of the most beautiful cities ever. it was originally built in the 1500s and has just barely been updated since then. all the streets radiate out from the parque central, a huge beautiful park bounded on the edges by old cathedrals and public buildings with long covered walkways. The houses and stores line each street and blend into a solid wall broken up by huge carved wooden doors and cement windowsills with deocrative iron work. each store and house is painted different colors so you look down the street into a long vista of bright colors and beautiful metal work. It feels like it's barely entered the 20th century, nevermind the 21st.

unlike guatemala city where you could go for days without seeing another american, here you can't go 10 feet without seeing someone who isn't guatemalan. every imaginable nationality and language interspersed with brightly dressed native men and women. when we were here in 1984 there were 2 spanish language schools,now there are 75. so most of the travelers here are learning spanish and struggling to speak to the vendors and waiters.

that's what makes this place amazing. what makes it a hazard is the street and the sidewalk. the streets are all cobblestone and there are no street signs, no lights and no speed limit. the only thing slowing anybody down is the cobblestones - doing a fine job - and the people trying to cross the streets at any given time - who are in slighly more danger. added to this colorful situation are the sidewalks which average about 3 feet wide and sometimes 2 feet off the street with an abrupt drop. here's an average walk down the street.

Run across the street, watch the motorcycle carrying a man, woman and 2 children swerve around you as a pickup truck stacked with probably 500 pineapples neary runs over the moto and then nearly runs into the building as it careens to the left at the last minute. hop up a foot onto the sidewalk, walk to the very edge of the sidewalk to avoid running into the windowsill and then flatten yourself against the building to share the sidewalk with the couple from canada coming the other way who are wearing camelbacks and carrying 2 way radios. continue down the sidewalk, leaping over the legs of the guatemalan man who's asleep in the doorway and then step completely over the head of the 2 year old who is selling a necklace and is squatted right next to the sleeping man. than abruptly the sidewalk slants down sharply as it turns into a driveway so you sidle along the wall back to the flat area and then jump over the hole in the sidewalk with a 2 foot drop and no cover. avoid another windowsill and then jump into the street to walk around the truck parked with one set of wheels on the sidewalk. hop back up onto the sidewalk, which abruptly ends at another cross street. Congratulations, you've gone one block in Antigua!

However, the food has been excellent and the parque central promises to be full of activity tonight on Christmas eve (noche buena). There will be live music, huge puppets, several santas, all the trees covered with white lights and probably midnight masses at all the cathedrals. I can't wait! more later...

Adelante! Que buscas?

Good grief, this keyboard is going to kill me. Not only are there a ton of new symbols, meaning that all the regular keys are in the wrong place, but half the keys create symbols different than the ones marked on the keys and the other half have symbols worn off so I cant tell what Im doing. And I only have a half an hour while we´re waiting for transport to Antigua, so forgive the spelling and grammer.

We got into Guatemala city last night after a brisk 2.5 hour flight. Pippa was a little champ despite having been sick the day or two before and having a lingering cold and smoker´s cough. Mom brought lollipops to distract her during the flight, I brought my earplugs. See how we are? We finally retrieved our luggage at the smallest, lowest most crowded luggage carrousel I´ve ever seen, got through customs without any issues and then tried to find Nate, who was meeting us. As we walked out of the airport security area we entered the area where everyone waits for the incoming flights. It was a long hallway spilling into an open room that opens to the outdoors with a huge garage door type. They had roped off the center section into a hallway of sorts for the arriving people to walk down, and on both sides of the gauntlet were waiting people stacked about 20 deep. 20 people deep on either side for a hundred feet or more, then maybe a hundred more outside. I´ve never seen so many people waiting at the airport. All we needed was screaming and I would have felt like one of the Beatles arriving in that old footage from the 60´s. It was crazy. Somehow we found nate, haggled over taxis and got into the city to our hotel by about 10Pm. We ate at a French (!) restaurant at a two story mall = crepes and Gallo beer, which is like alcoholic water. And then we heard REALLy loud Christmas music so we investigate and they have set up a ¨snow¨ machine on the second floor spitting out tiny bits of soapy water falling to the first floor to the accompaniment of LET IT SNOW LET IT SNOW LET IT SNOW. Everyone´s whirling around under the ¨snow¨ with their kids on their shoulders, looking at the ¨snow¨ in their hair and generally acting like `people do when it snows. It was fun and then slippery and then the floor was a complete hazard. It was about 80 degrees outside when we got here so this is as close to snow as we´re likely to get.

The next morning we had our desayuno tipico ‘ eggs, refried beans, fried plantains and salsa with café con leche, and headed to the market. The market was exactly like every movie or picture you´ve ever seen. Brightly dressed native women and kids selling every possible item, fresh flowers, live chickens, clothes, shoes, jewelry, icons, masks, junky souveniers, cheap electronics, food cooked on open grills, vegetables cut open to show their freshness, fruit stacked in pyramids and Christmas decorations galore. And of course the stalls are tiny and all crammed in next to eachother with super narrow aisles that you are sharing with the dog and the guy on the bicycle at any given moment and the ceilings are Low, because the native people here average about 5 feet tall. So Chris, my brother in law, constantly bumped his head on the ¨ceiling¨, really just umbrellas or tarps strung up over the stalls. Then from all sides are the calls of Adelante! Que buscas! Or Come on in! What are you looking for? And the tiny kids crowding up next to you to sell you hand made bracelets or small dolls or what have you. It´s insane.

We bought very little, knowing that we´re going to see a version of this Mercado everywhere we go for the next 10 days and the mother of all mercados is in chichicastenango where we´ll be on Thursday. But it´s a completely overwhelming experience. So many people and things and colors and smells and sounds packed into a very small area, like a solid cube of sensory overload

That was most of our day and of course I´m out of time. So I´m out of ehre so lorien can check her email before we leave. But one brief thing, the water situation. We aren´t supposed to drink it, brush our teeth in it, let it get in your mouth in the shower or even breathe near it, as far as I can tell. Muy malo. So the first night, no problem, I use bottled water. The next day I don´t think about it and then that night I´m brushing my teeth and realize the water´s running. Crap! Then I realize that I also brushed my teeth in the water that morning. Crap crap! So I´m telling this story at breakfast this morning and everyone´s giving me their dire health predictions and I´m agreeing with them and anxiously scanning my person for signs of trauma. I go back to the hotel and am brushing my teeth and again realize, the water´s running. Sigh. I do not follow directions well. So if this is my last post, it´s been fun! Merry Christmas everyone!

OK, a little bit of whining

My students are driving me to drink.

I gave them their final exam last night and after 3 solid hours of grading their final projects, I started grading their exams at about 10PM. I quit at 10:15 and decided that not only was I hungry (and as an aside, I learned that diesel trucks are incompatible with drive-throughs …) but that 10 at night and sober was no time to be facing these exams. Sigh. Now admittedly, when I took this class as part of my master’s degree, most of the students did badly on this exam. It’s hard. I knew that. But still!

Obviously these are first time teacher woes, but I think my experience probably shows up the worst and best of higher education here in the US. The best part is that I actually care about these kids. They are young, idealistic, most of them first or second generation immigrants and they have day jobs and families so they go to school at night. I support them. I want them to succeed. Given the fact that they got up somewhere between 4-6AM to work all day, rush home to feed their kids and are still awake at 9PM at night trying to absorb the finer points of Western fashion history, I salute their drive and discipline.

However, the worst – in my opinion – is that I have no teaching certificate (and I don’t need one since I have an MFA degree) which means that I’m teaching this stuff by trial and error. And I always feel slightly ashamed admitting that. “Yeah I teach. Nope, no real training. Yeah, they let me do it anyway. Who knew?”

And never having taught this class before, it’s a tremendous amount of effort on my part (like 10+ hours per week of preparation and 4 hours of being engaging and charming in class, which is EXHAUSTING :) and I can’t always tell what they are absorbing. I don’t think their lower education experience has really prepared them for college. They don’t write well and it seems that language in general is a huge barrier to them understanding me. It’s frustrating, from a teacher perspective, to go over something several times in class, write it down on the exam sheet and go over it again before the exam and STILL have a few students doing it wrong. I feel like I need a whole other way of communicating because words don’t really do it. My instinct is to come down hard on myself because it’s my responsibility to make sure they understand me.

But who came up with this class room teaching model anyway? Doesn’t it seem ridiculous to put a bunch of people from disparate backgrounds/languages/cultures etc. in the same room and expect them all to learn from one person? Given what we know about the vast differences in the ways that people learn – visual vs. auditory vs, kinesthetic – doesn’t that seem like a recipe for failure? The teacher is going to teach the way that they themselves learn and the only people likely to pick it up are the ones that naturally learn that way or the ones that are extremely adaptable.

So, point being, I have 14 tests to grade and I’m coming up with new and interesting ways to be lenient so I that they will pass it. And it’s only 10 in the morning so I can’t really start drinking yet. I’m starting to have a lot of sympathy for Mrs. Krabappel.

Rock star dolls

I love these!

My History of Fashion class made these dolls on Monday night. We studied the fashion period from 1950-1990 and talked about the influence of celebrities, models and rock stars. I then gave each group a different rock genre and told them to recreate "the look."

So, here we have a punk rock star, more 80's than 70's.



A Glam rock star, sort of David Bowie - ish.


A hippy from Woodstock - and I think he's smoking a doobie...

And an 80's hair band rock star, a la Bon Jovi.

Aren't they brilliant?

Been a long time, been a long time now...

But I haven't forgotten about you. How could I?

Things in Tucson have been winding down - and up - at the end of the year. I have to say that I am MOST ready for this year to end. I have high hopes for 2007.

And in the meantime, here are things I'm looking forward to, in no particular order:

1. Holiday happy hour reunion with the Super Witches

2. The end of my school mod. I think they want me to teach again next year but I don't know what classes they want to give me. My draping class has settled down and my girls are doing SO well. It's amazing how much of a difference 2 months can make. They've gone from not knowing how to use a sewing machine to being able to drape bodices. Staggering... Meanwhile, my History of Fashion class has taught me more about teaching than anything I've ever done. I've enjoyed the trial and error but would LOVE to not teach it again for a couple of months. I'd like some time to let the lessons sink in, let's see if I get it.

3. I'm immensely thankful for my friends who have been so supportive this past month - especially Jess, Karen, Diane, Kateri and Jen. I literally would not have made it without you. I'm looking forward to some holiday drinking with you all (in spirit if not reality...)

4. Guatemala! For Christmas and New Years. Huge cheers to that! I just bought a new camera - which will be in my possession next week. I promise many pictures of my travels.

5. The promise of a new city in 2007. Where? When? Who knows. I'm looking forward to finding out.

Happy December to everyone!