The Race is Over . . . I Think.

Monday, October 27th
For all of you who are competing to be the first to visit us during our travels here is the latest update:

There are rumors that our first visitors (Gabby´s fantastic parents, Judy and Michael) have flown in to Guatemala. I suspect they may even be in Xela at this moment although we haven´t seen them yet. We can´t wait to see friendly faces from home! So if you want to beat them here you better hurry, you may only have minutes before they show up . . . or you may have days.

-Besos

UPDATE:  It is Wednesday, October 29th. Andrea´s birthday has come and gone and still no sign or word from Judy and/or Michael. ¿Donde estan?

UPDATE:  Wednesday...later.  Judy and Michael were driving through Parque Central when we ran into them today.  The race is officially over....but who will be second?

A few things that Guatemaltecos would like us to know about Jesucristo

as evidenced by billboards, graffiti, store names, bumper stickers, bus decor, and general musings to this effect.

El es el camino
El es mi rey
El es mi mejor amigo
Solo él puede cambiar tu vida
El es el pan de vida
El es la vida
El vive
El viene
El es dios
El es amor
El te ama
El es el señor
El es el señor de ______ (muchos buses, tiendas, pueblos, y ciudades)
El es verbo, no sustantivo
El es la única esperanza para ti

My Jero

Escuela de la Montaña, where we spent our first week in Guatemala, is awesome for a lot of reasons. It is a gorgeous mountain setting where we had our one on one lessons in our own individual “ranchitos” surrounded by flowers and fresh air. We spent our afternoons drinking coffee grown nearby, and doing our homework in the hammocks. The school does its best to educate students on the social and political reality in Guatemala, and seems very conscious of its impact on the nearby communities and the general environment. But I’m pretty sure that my favorite thing about Escuela de la Montaña was Jorge.

Jorge is Escuela de la Montaña’s very own herbal medicine specialist. (I think I just made that title up. I’m sure there’s something much more official.) He studied the medicinal properties of plants for years, at a couple different schools, and the man is basically magic. Anytime a student was sick, we’d describe our symptoms to Jorge, which usually went something like:

“hurt” pointing, rubbing stomach “stomach” making fist “no good” “me stomach,” and repeat.
And that was just to describe a sore throat.

But Jorge always got it, and he’d walk through his garden picking some leaves here and there, and boil it all into some magic potion of a tea for us to drink. He saved Sarah’s life twice, Gabby’s once, and I got in on it every time, prevention-style.

Naturally, being a tiny bit obsessed with Jorge and his gift, we made the poor guy walk us around his garden, telling us the names and uses of each herb, while I snapped photos and Gabby and Sarah wrote down exactly what he said. So now we have our own little catalog—let us know dondé tienes dolor. Oh, and Jorge also happened to be son of my host mother, Aurelia, uncle of Lucrecia, and the one who built our ranchitos. For some reason, Jorge declined our offer to travel with us for the next 9 months.

Sorry it’s been so long. I promise to be a better blogger.

Odds and Ends

Hi everybody!
We´ve been going to salsa classes here lately. There´s a chico named Elvis who I´ve been partners with a couple times and once he gave me a ride home on his motorcycle. He invited us to go to a salsa club last friday with other students from the class and we went! And it was kinda fun! They do the YMCA just like we do! I´ve never sweat so much in my life. I didn´t take a shower because I was just too tired but my hair was fabulous the next day so it was ok.

We went to a town called San Francisco a few days ago and a mayan shaman (who just looked like a normal dude) told us what our ¨nahuals¨are. They are like the social security number of your soul and they depend on what day you were born. We each had numerous ones but among them, Sarah had a dog, Andrea had a kind of wildcat, and I had a woodpecker.

We have bought our tickets to Argentina and we leave on November 4th! We also have decided to do one more week of school, even though we are already fluent. There aren´t many students next week so we thought we would help the school out, maybe even teach. Our last day will be Halloween! It´s customary for graduating students to prepare a speech or a poem as a way of demonstrating what they´ve learned. We have decided to make a silent film! We will post it when it is complete so you all can see!

Love you all very much!

Skypetacular!

Just a quick note to let you all know we are now signed up for skype so you all can call and leave messages or talk to us if we are online! Our info is...

(307) 466-0141
Andrea - andrea.dvdsn
Sarah - sarahdvdsn
Gabby - gabrielledavidson

We love the comments here and we would love to hear all your voices!

Boda Bonita

We got the opportunity to go with Sarah´s family, Edwin and Lorena, last night to a traditional wedding reception. I thought for the most part that it was the same as our weddings. They played the wedding song as the bride and groom walked through the doors (they also played happy birthday), there were decorations and food and a big ol cake and a band complete with marimba. The only real differences were that the women were dressed traditionally and they did a traditional dance. There were two rows of people facing eachother and they just swayed back and forth, back and forth to the music of the marimba. I think that even we three could do it.

We brought them a gift: a set of tasteful white-with-gold trim cups and saucers. Later we frantically wondered whether we had the same idea of tasteful as they did. Most dishes here have colorful pictures of fruit or flowers or ¨Happy Mother´s Day¨ on them. Were plain ones considered tacky? I think we were okay though because we were served tea at the wedding in cups very similar to the ones we had bought.

Once there, we joined a long procession of people waiting to give their congratulations and gifts to the newlyweds. I couldn´t help feeling awkward as I handed ours to the groom with a meek ¨Felicitaciones¨. And though he was gracious, I couldn´t help but wonder if he was wondering ¨Who the heck are you people and why are you at my wedding?¨ Maybe they don´t think like that here. Probably, the more the merrier.

We didn´t dance except for at the end. It was a special dance for all the women who came alone. It ended up being a different and much safer version of when the bride throws her boquet. Instead of standing in a huddle behind her ready to body slam anyone who gets in your way, you dance in a circle around her. And she throws it 3 times so there isn´t only one winner. How nice.

It was a lovely evening and it was made complete by Edwin´s 80´s mix, including Billy Jean and Eye of the Tiger, that we listened to on the way home.

La Lluvia (the rain)

We have aparently come to Guatemala during the rainy season. One of my favorite phrases to use is "Hay mucho lluvia!" (there is a lot of rain) because, well, I learned the word for rain early on, because I don´t know how to say much else, and because there IS a lot of rain. I may sound a little stupid for stating the obvious, but at least I don´t sound stupid because my grammar is bad, that´s something, no? The locals ALWAYS respond with "Yes, it´s the rainy season". I love the rain. At first I was so happy, the rainy season is fantastic, the rain is fantastic, I love it! And then three weeks went by...

You should know that as we walk through these beautiful cobblestone and mud streets here in Xela we are always watching for dog poop because there are so many stray dogs. So as it has rained for the last six hours and I have to walk to school, in my flip flops because all my other shoes are soaking wet, and I am standing ankle deep in water, I can´t help but wonder what happened to all that dog poop that I so carefully did not step in.

I am beginning to revise my opinion on rain.