On my last day in Guatemala, I wrote one final blog post for the Mayan Families blog that I'd like to share here. I believe it really sums up my experience:

My name is Mary and I am a Junior in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Ohio State University. I visited Mayan Families for one week in May with a group from my university and fell in love with the country, the people and the experience. I decided to apply for a two-month summer internship and returned to Panajachel in late June.

During my time here, I have experienced a real Guatemalan birthday party, a Guatemalan funeral, a Guatemalan first date… and a Guatemalan second date. Though my first weeklong adventure here was an extremely fulfilling experience, two months has been more rewarding than I ever thought imaginable.

My primary role at Mayan Families was teaching in the preschool. The students learned basic scientific concepts by building simple experiments.  Professor Betty Lise Anderson and Clayton Greenbaum of the OSU STEM Education Outreach Program donated the supplies we used. After only one week here, my science role expanded to include teaching computer classes – an opportunity to introduce children to technology. After another week, I began offering after school science classes to Mayan Families’ sponsored junior high students.

Working as a teacher, I saw the enormous importance of education, particularly Mayan Families’ Preschools, to Guatemala. These students go into kindergarten so well prepared for school. They no longer have to struggle to learn a new language while adapting to the classroom environment. I have worked with students in their first year of the program, students in their second year of junior high, and even side by side with graduates of the program who now work at Mayan Families and help provide these educational opportunities to others. Sponsoring a child to go to school changes their life. It leads to a higher standard of living for these students, for their future children, and for generations to come

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Multiple times I had the opportunity to build experiments with all-female classes. As a female engineer, I feel very strongly about encouraging women to pursue careers in male-dominated fields. In Guatemala, most indigenous women marry young and work only in their homes, but with just a few more years of schooling they can become qualified for a host of other positions. Imagine the explosion of innovation that will come from opening doors that have previously been closed to half of a nation’s population!

These two months have been packed full of projects and plans. Outside of my classes, I have bounced between the Education, Construction, and Communications departments and have been introduced to so many facets of the wonderful work that Mayan Families does. With the help of dedicated donors, workers, and volunteers, this organization has improved the lives of so many families. So much has been accomplished in a relatively short amount of time.

However, there is still so much more to do. I take solace in the fact that my goodbyes now are not for forever. This experience has opened my eyes to a country and culture and I cannot wait to come back.

Day 31 - Reviver Futbol

So after a bit of a lazy weekend and most of a busy work week, Thursday rolled around.

Usually, my team plays soccer on Tuesday nights, but Thursday night soccer is not unheard of, so I didn’t think much of it when Angelica told me they were playing tonight. I went home after work and prepared for another simple, fun night of soccer with las Guatemaltecas on our little soccer field nearby.

Boy did I get a fun surprise!

Instead of going to our usual soccer field Lydia and Angelica instructed the tuktuk driver to take us someplace new - to a field that I had never heard of. We took winding back streets much farther than normal to a large field where we found some of our coworkers waiting with one of the Mayan Families volunteer groups for this week.

Reviver is a church group that is here in Panajachel for one week installing numerous beds, water filters, and even building a house with the funds that they raised. On only their second day here, one of the group leaders had the fantastic idea to throw together a soccer game with their group versus some of the local Mayan Families teams. Now I know to recommend this idea to every group that comes down to volunteer in the future. We had a blast!

The Reviver volunteers ranged from college-level soccer stars to first time players, but fun was had by all. There was a sizeable group of us so we each played quick games to three, then traded off with two new teams of six. This went on for about two hours, though it seemed like no time at all.

The players from Reviver initially were a bit surprised to see me, the only gringa there outside of their group, playing on the Mayan Families worker team. They couldn’t decide if I was going to be a ringer for my team with my height and long legs or if I was going to hold back my fast Guatemalan compañeras. Lydia was without question our star, scoring most of our goals, but I am proud to say that I held my own on defense.

Afterward, we all shared some Lindor truffles that Reviver had brought and took pictures as one great big group. I think it was a great bonding experience for the group, both in terms of getting to play with native Guatemalans and getting to know the Mayan Families staff.

Everyone agreed that this would make a great regular occurrence. When I return to Panajachel with Ohio State in a year, I’ll make sure to tell everyone to pack their game faces. Soccer is definitely on.

Day 30 - Kaqchikel Lessons

There are twenty-three Mayan languages still present in Guatemala. The language spoken varies by region. Most Mayan children grow up speaking the indigenous language of their region and only learn Spanish when it is thrust upon them for the first time in kindergarten. This is one of the main reasons that the Mayan Families Foundation started their preschool program. Indigenous Mayans are more likely to drop out of school than non-indigenous students because public schools are taught solely in Spanish and often Mayan students have to repeat their first few years because they do not understand the language. In Mayan Families preschools the children can be introduced to Spanish by teachers who speak their indigenous language and this prepares them for kindergarten and beyond.

Kaqchikel is the Mayan language spoken in Panajachel.

I’ve always jumped at the opportunity to learn new things. Even if those things are a hefty undertaking and essentially impossible to complete.

So even though my Spanish still could use quite a bit of work, I have started taking informal Kaqchikel lessons with several of my new friends.

My main maestra is a baker at the hostel/cake shop where I stayed during my first week here. She has spoken Kaqchikel all of her life and started learning Spanish when she was nine years old. She is only sixteen, but she works and lives in La Zanahoria Chic a two hour truck ride away from her home town near San Andres. She excitedly tells me that she can go home for one day every three or four weeks.

Another teacher of mine is just twelve years old and his Spanish is only about as good as mine. He and his younger brother are staying at Mayan Families temporarily after both of their parents passed away. He is very smart, but is not currently in school. He will probably start working once they find a place to live unless he can get full sponsorship through Mayan Families to go to school.

Both of my teachers are children living adult lives. They have to think about where to live, how to earn money, and how to support themselves and their families. But they are happy kids who like to talk and have fun. They laugh at my horrible pronunciation and my desire to learn a language that most Guatemalans study hard to forget. I wish that there was more that I could do for kids like these.

But for now all I can do is spread the word of how to help and spread the wonderful words that I am learning from them.

Matyox was the first word they taught me. In Kaqchikel, it means “Thank you”.

Day 23 - Los Basicos

Though I have been here for more than three weeks, I have experienced little to no culture shock. I have found that I don’t make many US-centric assumptions, and Guatemala has been meeting most of my expectations.

At least, that was true until last Thursday.

I had been teaching science classes in the preschool since the 30^th of June. They were going rather successfully so the education director asked if I would teach one more class a week with the Basicos. 

“Basico” is a Spanish word meaning “primary” and was translated for me as “middle schoolers”. I naturally agreed and last Thursday marked my first class with them.

I was aware that they might be older than what I would expect for middle school in the United States. Because for so many students here going to school depends on sponsorship through Mayan Families, and there are many more children than sponsors, some students lose sponsors and have to take time off of school until another sponsor is found for them. Even students who don’t miss school may have to repeat grades because all classes Kindergarten and above are taught completely in Spanish and not their native Kaqchikel, Quiche, Tsusujil, etc. So I figured that these middle schoolers might be old. Circa 12 or so.

My youngest student on Thursday was 15. My oldest was close to 19. I was definitely taken aback that I was teaching “middle schoolers” not far in age from me.

So I had to do some on-the-spot upgrading of my lesson plans. Preschoolers can be captivated by floating objects and water bottles by for long periods of time, but it takes a little more effort to keep teenagers interested.

I decided that for future classes I would have to make separate lesson plans for my preschools and my teenagers. And tomorrow is Day Two with the Basicos. Time to test drive those new lesson plans.

Every day is something new. Wish me luck!

Day 20 - Volcano San Pedro

My flatmate Robi and I decided that after two weekends of being relatively boring, this weekend we wanted to go out and do something exciting and memorable. We made a long list of possibilities and finally settled on hiking the Volcano San Pedro. It was advertised as a strenuous hike, but based on gut feelings and perhaps a little personal pride we both decided we were up for it.

We got an early start on Saturday to catch a boat around 8am (again boats do not leave at a certain time, they leave when they are full, so 8am is just a rough ETD). The direct boat to San Pedro took almost an hour. We arrived at the dock and discovered that maybe it’s the boat driver, maybe it’s San Pedro, but the price for the trip was a nonnegotiable 25Q each.

A man caught us at the dock and offered to take us to the trail entrance and up the volcano for 170Q a piece. We were not confident that we could get a better price anyplace else, but Robi had done his research and heard that the hike itself was a flat 100Q and that you should never pay anyone at the dock, but should wait until you reach the park entrance. The man was very persistent and assured us that because the entrance was quite far from the dock 170Q was a good price. Robi and I said we had to think about it and walked a bit further down the street discussing our options. Our conversation was interrupted by a tuktuk driver who offered to take us to the head of the trail for 10Q each. Including the return trip in the tuktuk this meant that in total we would pay 120Q for this hike, which was a considerable amount less than the 170Q offered to us at the dock. We took the tuktuk with fingers crossed that online sources had been accurate, and it would cost only 100Q at the entrance. We were delighted to find at the entrance that the not only was the hike just 100Q, but that that price also included a guide. Our guide’s name was Francisco and he spoke Spanish and Tsusujil a Mayan language common in the San Pedro region.

The hike was HARD. It got very steep very fast. My Tuesday night soccer games definitely had not prepared me for the intensity of this climb. I had to stop with ridiculous frequency. There were two miradores (stopping spots with scenic views) before the top of the volcano, and Francisco told me that if I only wanted to climb to one of those and then turn around then I would still have made it farther than a large number of groups that he had taken up before. But I was not giving up. I was not going to say that I got up at 7am to take a boat to a tuktuk to a trail only to decide that the hike was too hard for me and turn around. Robi would often go on ahead and then climb back down to us or wait for us further up the trail. For this reason Francisco gave Robi the nickname Corazon del Leon (Heart of a Lion). After about the third time that he suggested that I didn’t have to complete the climb, I told Francisco in Spanish, “I may be slow. But I finish what I start. I am going to the top.” He was pleased with my drive and cited the Tortoise and the Hare: “Despacio y constante gana la carrera”. And that was how I got the nickname La Tortuga Segura (The Safe Turtle). It was not quite as glamorous as Heart of a Lion, but I was proud of it. I was not a quitter, and our guide knew that now.

Three hours later, 9,906 feet higher than we started, we reached the peak of Volcano San Pedro. The view was breathtaking; it was impossible to believe how high up we were. We picnicked at the top, Robi and I giving Francisco a sandwich and some cookies, and Francisco sharing his tortillas and beans with us. I decided that Francisco was La Puma Paciente (The Patient Puma) for going so slowly with me all the way up. But he revealed that the hike usually takes between two and a half and three hours so I wasn’t actually exceptionally slow. He just had to be sure that his hikers were in it for the long haul before they exhausted themselves very high up and had trouble coming back down again.

After about an hour at the top we hustled back down the mountain. Francisco’s friend was having a party that day, and he told her he could probably make it by three. And of course there is always the high chance of heavy rain in the afternoons. We descended with another hiker from Austria, Dominic, and his guide Luis. Dominic did not speak very much Spanish at all, and his guide was relieved to have someone to chat to on the way down. Luis told me that he did not believe that I was from the US because my Spanish was so good. I really think that it got noticeably better on the climb. Talking in Spanish for what turned out to be five and a half hours straight certainly got conversation to flow more easily.

We went tuktuk to boat to home to bed. I’ll be definitely be feeling it in the morning, but I did not give up. I conquered Volcano San Pedro. I can safely say that I did not have just another boring weekend.

Day 14 - Earthquake

Some rather large news is that there was an earthquake in Guatemala this Monday morning. Final reports say it was a 6.9 magnitude and centered around the Mexican and Guatemalan border, not very far from the Lake Atitlan region. Though it was closer to the other side of the lake than the side of Panajachel, we certainly felt it pass through a bit after five in the morning. It shook me awake, and in my groggy state I was very slow to recognize what it was. I just opened my eyes and thought, “My bed is moving… my apartment is moving…the whole world is moving.” Then I thought, “Either it’s an earthquake or my apartment is falling down.” But with the length of time that it took me, still half-asleep, to have all of these thoughts, the shaking stopped, and I felt relieved that whatever was happening was over and my apartment had not collapsed so I could go back to sleep. I might’ve thought it was all a dream if my flat mate hadn’t at that point called out asking if I had felt it too. He had been less groggy and the shaking got him out of bed and into a doorway safe from falling objects. I was very fortunate not to have anything over head as my disaster reflexes were far from impressive. Nothing in the apartment broke, though some shampoo in the bathroom took a dive from the shaking, and I found out the next morning when I opened the fridge that things had definitely shifted around in there. But we and most others in Panajachel were very blessed with little to no damage and no reported injuries. School was called off the next day for the whole department of Solalá, as some areas had lost power, but work commenced as usual, and everyone arrived shaken but unscathed.

San Marcos, where I had been to visit the very afternoon before the earthquake, was hit harder than Panajachel. When I checked the news there were two reported deaths from the San Marcos area from a collapsing house and quite a bit of damage there. It feels so strange that if I returned now, not even a day later, some of the places I saw might be rather different. Every day the world is changing. 

Day 13 - Hiking in San Marcos

On Sunday I took a boat to San Marcos to see another lake town and visit my friend Valentina. The trip there took about an hour but didn’t seem long at all because it was so filled with beautiful views.

An interesting note about the boat rides is that boats do not leave or arrive at a scheduled time. From what I experienced, the drivers just sit in the dock until every person sized area in their boat is filled, and then they take off for their destination. If no one seems to be coming to the dock they might leave with some spaces left open, but they also might sit and wait for a good long time until more passengers wander over. It just depends on the driver. On the way to San Marcos there were several more people than seats on the boat and almost all with bags of feed or seed or flowers or food. There were three stops before we reached San Marcos: Santa Cruz, Jaibalito, and a third that I didn’t find out the name of because the man sitting next to me warned me that time before I could ask where we were that No, this dock was not yet San Marcos.

Another tidbit that it will be good to remember is not to take a boat from the dock at the bottom of the main street, Calle Santender. Though from that area the two docks there look like the only boat docks around, if you turn right on the last street before you reach those docks and walk a short distance down that road, you’ll reach a public dock that is equally good but less crowded with tourists and thus significantly cheaper. 

My friends had warned me not to pay over 25Q (~$3.30) for the boat to San Marcos; any more than that, and they were overcharging me. So the boat ride there I paid 25Q and felt very price savvy. Yet a short conversation later in the day with Valentina, a native Guatemalan, revealed that Guatemaltecas pay 8Q for the same trip, and though I probably couldn’t talk the drivers down to that price, I could drop a significant amount and still be overpaying. The boat ride back I gave the driver just 15Q, and he accepted it without question.

When we finally did arrive I was pleasantly surprised by the town. I had heard that every town around the lake has its own personality and feel, but I hadn’t traveled around much yet. San Marcos was very different from Pana in a lovely, flowery kind of way.

I sat and chatted with Valentina at her market for a bit. She had only started this new job the day before, yet her work was already in full swing. She works for Alma de Colores (Soul of Colors) an inclusive organization that sells crafts made by the disabled. After taking in the market I decided to take a hike. I had been told by some friends that there is place in the mountains in San Marcos called the Yoga Forest. If you go up the main road towards the valley at some point off to the side you see a rock with flowers painted on it. If you go off the road at that point you can follow the trail of painted flowers to the Yoga Forest.

Valentina warned me that it was quite a hike, and I was still wearing my church dress from that morning, but I had some good boots, lots of water, and a desire to go.

It was quite a hike. Sometimes the painted flowers were very far apart and I’d worry that I’d gone the wrong way before I saw the next one. Sometimes they were partially hidden under real foliage. And sometimes the path continued straight, but the flowers veered to the left or right.

I thought about Valentina saying that it’s such a hike that many people give up and turn back before they reach the Yoga Forest. My friend had told me that when he was there he had turned the wrong way someplace and lost the flower path completely. As I continued up the mountain, perfectly alone in the most beautiful of places, I considered the thought the maybe the benefit of the Yoga Forest is gotten not by being there but by getting there. I think I gained a huge amount tranquility - and exercise - from the hike. So half an hour later when the painted rocks stopped and off to the side there was a sign and a gate marked “The Yoga Forest”, I paused. I looked. And I kept on walking.

I didn’t feel finished with my journey up the mountain. I felt that I was gaining more than just altitude from my climb. So I passed the gate by, and I followed a narrow path ever upwards.

I would have continued forever if I hadn’t felt a few drops of rain and decided that I would be significantly less tranquil caught alone in a mountain mudslide. And I realized that I had hiked for almost two hours and the last boat back to Panajachel left at five. Though it was a tempting idea to spend the night surrounded by trees in San Marcos, it didn’t linger after another raindrop fell. So I turned around and hurried back down the way I came. When I made it the entrance of the Yoga Forest a second time I had escaped out from under the slow moving rain cloud and figured I might as well take a peek inside. I climbed a steep staircase and caught some beautiful views at the top before leaving again without going into the reception building towards what looked very much like a gringo spa.

An unfortunate discovery was that there is more than one path to the Yoga Forest. It made sense; people come from different directions. But it meant that though you can follow the flowers up to the gate, you cannot actually trust that following them in reverse will lead you back the way you came. I definitely made a few wrong turns, but luckily it was easy to remember that the direction I should be moving was down. Safely at the bottom, I reunited with Valentina, and we took a much less crowded lancha home to Panajachel.