Mi Caminata

Click this link to see more pictures of the hike.

Mi caminata - my hike. This Saturday I decided to take another hike up the mountain. I'm determined to reach the top of the mountain sometime and need to become adjusted to the high altitude and to build up my stamina (I can't let Jose Luis put me to shame!). Our house is at 7,000 ft., and the mountain top is at 8,000 ft. Jose Luis told me there is a wonderful view from the top of the mountain - you can see Antigua and the surrounding volcanoes.

My good friends, Lula and Rex (the German Shepherd dogs), came along to accompany me and be my body guards. One of the other dogs (a small black dog) decided to join us. Lula made certain the other dog trailed along at a distance. If the other dog came up close, Lula would run back and start biting the other dog.

There were many flowering bushes, trees and weeds along the way. I found that interesting because it is the dry season and there has not been significant rain for quite a while. I was again amazed at how many small farm plots and orchards are on the mountain. No one lives up there, and the farmers who care for the fields and orchards have a long uphill hike to tend the plots and a long way to transport their produce back down the mountain. As I hiked I saw an old man far ahead of me slowly trekking up the path. However, I soon lost sight of him and never saw him again.

When I returned, I showed my pictures to Daniel (Claudia's husband). He thought I was about 1/2 way to the top. That was encouraging because I did not feel too exhausted. However I think the slope becomes much steeper near the top. Enjoy the pictures!

Mi Casa

Click this link for more pictures of mi casa.

The house I live in is about 14 miles west of Guatemala City - at least the part of Guatemala City where I study Spanish. For now I will discuss my home. I will feature the family I live with in a later blog.

The route from Semilla/CASAS to my home is partly city streets and partly a 4-lane highway that winds its way over a mountain. On days when traffic is light the trip takes 30 minutes. On days when traffic is heavy (almost every day) the trip takes 1 hour to 1.5 hours. Yes, it has taken us 1.5 hours to go 14 miles. Traffic around Guatemala City is a mess during rush hour.

My family used to live closer to Guatemala City, but 8 years ago they purchased their current property and built a new home. Their daughter and son-in-law (Claudia and Daniel) are architects and designed the house. The reason they moved further out into the country is that their prior home was in an area where gang violence was increasing, and they felt it was best to leave the area.

The home is located on the side of a mountain (elevation 7,000 ft), about 1/3 of a mile from the main road. (See house location in Google Maps) The house is built of concrete, as are most houses I have seen in Guatemala. The are two main floors in the house. The first floor has a living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom and master bedroom. The second floor has an office/computer area, three bedrooms and a storage room. Halfway up the stairway there is a laundry room. Our water supply is from a spring located further up the mountain. We have electricity, phone, and internet service. The only hot water available is from a small electric heating element in the shower head (well, it is not always hot - but usually is warm enough to shower).

The lane leading up to the house goes further up the mountain - about another 1/10th of a mile - and then turns into a path. It is possible to hike to the top of the mountain (elevation 8,000 ft). Jose Luis (father of my family) said he will take me up there sometime. The problem for me will be the elevation - I get out of breath quite quickly. Jose Luis is 10 years older than me, and he can hike up the lane and mountain path at a good clip; I have to stop and rest several times.

About 5 years ago Claudia and Daniel (the daughter and son-in-law) also built a small house on the property and moved here. I have not been in that house. It is a single story structure and seems to be constructed of wood. I presume it is a temporary home - I'll have to ask about that.

Daytime temperatures have been in the upper 60s to lower 70s. At night it gets quite cool - in the mid 50s. That might not seem cold to those of you in Indiana, but when you are in a concrete house with concrete floors and no heat, located on the side of a mountain at 7,000 feet, it is quite cold. In the evenings I wear a t-shirt, shirt and jacket, and I still often feel cold. At night I sleep under 3 blankets.

Truce

With herb soup, Pepto-Bismol, Ibuprofen, hot tea and rest serving as mediators, Tecún Umán and I worked throughout the night to negotiate a truce. I will stay home and rest today and will be very respectful of all food and drink I consume in the future. Tecún Umán will rescind the curse placed upon me and give my body permission to heal. As of 10:30 the truce still holds and I expect to be back to normal tomorrow.

Yo estoy enfermo

Hoy esta hace fresco y yo estoy enfermo. Today it is cool, and I am sick. I think my Spanish is close to saying that anyway. At least my family understood when I said, "Yo estoy enfermo." at church. I did not even have to use a dictionary to get my point across! So, I guess I am making some progress.

It seems Tecún Umán's revenge (Mayan version of Montezuma's revenge) finally caught up with me. My talisman against diarrhea could not hold out against the stronger powers of the Maya. But, it worked for two and a half weeks! Maybe I should have kept 3 packets of pills in my pocket instead of one.

Around 5:00 this morning I got awake with mild diarrhea. I thought it would go away and had my usual eggs and beans for breakfast. About halfway through the church service my stomach became upset, I felt light-headed, I developed a splitting headache and my diarrhea continued. After church I talked with two nurses (recent Goshen College grads) who are at CASAS. Kerri gave me some Ibuprofen and told me not to take my diarrhea pills unless things got really bad. She suggested getting some CIPRO, a broad spectum antibiotic, in case things got really bad. It seems as if few medicines require a prescription here - you just go into a pharmacy and buy whatever you want. The prices are really cheap.

On the way home from church we stopped and got some Pepto-Bismol and CIPRO. I took the Pepto-Bismol when we got home, but will not take the antibiotics unless I get really bad. Claudia made me some special soup that is good for upset stomachs.

I'm not certain what caused the diarrhea. Yesterday Olga's mother came for lunch (she is 87) and brought some really hot salsa. Of course, it was necessary for me to put that in my soup. It was so hot tears streamed down my face. Everyone was laughing. I felt better when Jorge also got out a napkin to dab his eyes. So, it may have been the chili in the salsa. I'm quite careful about what I drink and usually drink bottled water (agua pura). However for lunch we had lemonade made with filtered water from the spring that the family uses. The chili was so hot I drank a lot of lemonade. That also may have contributed to my sickness. Then last Friday evening we stopped and got tortillas from a road vendor at a gas station. I ate one that was mildly warm and toasted another. So, it may have been a combination of many things.

Right now (3:30p) I'm going to bed. Hopefully some rest, the soup and the Pepto-Bismol will have me in good shape by tomorrow morning. No pictures with this post. I could take one of me sitting on the toilet, but will spare you and me the embarrassment.

Iximche

Click for more pictures of Iximche

Iximche is the site of a Mayan city founded in 1470. It is located about 50 miles outside Guatemala City. Iximche was the capital city of the Kaqchikel Maya. When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in 1524, they formed an alliance with the Kaqchikel Maya - promising to be an ally against the rival Kiche Maya. But, as happened so many times, the Spanish did not honor this alliance. After establishing their own capital at a nearby location, the Spanish attacked Iximche several times. The Kaqchikel Maya fled Iximche to the surrounding mountains and launched attacks against the Spanish. The Spanish burned Iximche to the ground in 1526, and in 1527 left the area and built another capital city near Antigua Guatemala. The site was buried for centuries until Jorge Guillemin, a Guatemalan archaeologist, conducted excavations of Iximche from 1960-1972.

I visited Iximche with the AMBS group on January 15.

Quick Update

Picture to the left: Flowers in the CASAS compound.

Just a quick update...

This morning I came to town with my host father (he calls me his brother). We went to his office at the Mennonite Central Committee headquarters and participated in a men's bible study. I was able to pick out isolated words, but not enough to put anything together to know what was being said. When I was introduced there seemed to be comments that I was not a gringo ("Yankee from the north"), but was welcome as one of them - at least that is what I hope the comments were about !!!! ;-). Even though I understand very little, situations like that are helpful because they give me a sense of the cadence of the language and help me identify sounds and words.

Later in the morning I spent time with the Registrar/Technology Specialist at SEMILLA/CASAS. He is quite young and a fairly recent employee. My first two technology tasks will be to look at ways to get better reports from their database and to help them more fully develop their website. Our discussion was interesting because he is learning English, and I am learning Spanish. There were many times of laughter as we each looked at the other with blank expressions. At one point we had to get a translator, but translating technical computer terms is not that easy!!

My second Spanish lesson did not produce the headache I had on Monday. I hope that is progress. One of our activites was a memory game - turning over cards with pictures and words, then trying to match them. My teacher did better than I - not because she is a native Spanish speaker, but because her memory is so much better than my memory. I never did well at that game.

Tomorrow I leave on a 4-day trip with the AMBS (Elkhart Seminary) group. So there will not be any posts to this blog until I return. I also have a good bit of Spanish homework to do - write 21 (simple) sentences using all the various forms of 'to be' and including indentification, descriptions, time/date, emotions, etc. I may not be able to post anything until Monday or Tuesday evening.

As I write this I'm reminded of one very noticeable difference between Guatemala City and Goshen - the length of time for sunrise and sunset. Due to the many mountains and volcanos around the city, the transition from dark/light and light/dark is very rapid. By the time I realize the sun is setting - boom! - it is dark. And in the morning it seems like a light switch goes on when the sun rises.

Pictures:

Left - hillside on outskirts of Guatemala City at night.

Right - Volcano in the background. You can see the base of the volcano under the clouds and the tip of the volcano above the clouds. (Click on the pictures to get an enlarged view.)

Museo Ixchel

This morning we visited Museo Ixchel, a museum of Mayan textiles and clothing.  Adrian, a Canadian anthropologist working at CASAS, went along.  Adrian's Ph.D. is in Mayan culture, so we benefited from her knowledge and experience.

Our visit to the museum was in preparation for a trip to Chichicastenango, a Mayan market town, this weekend. Weaving, textiles and clothing have always been important aspects of Mayan culture - even taking on religious or cosmological meaning.   Much of the specific religious significance of the patterns has been lost due to European influence and the introduction of Western religion.  However, the ancient geometric patterns still communicate important aspects of traditional Mayan spirituality: a sense of balance, centering, community and a four-cornered universe.

On another note, for my Spanish homework I had to describe characteristics of various people.  My entry for Rachel (my daughter):

ella es casada
ella es una mujer
ella es una madre
ella es una hija
ella es energica
ella es simpatica
ella es joven

Three Hours of Spanish

Today I had my first Spanish class - three hours, one-on-one, intensive, fatiguing, headache producing. This is not a critique of my teacher. Albertina is wonderful, and I like her approach to instruction. This is a commentary on how difficult it is to learn a new language, especially for an old brain with plaque-encrusted neurons and synapses that have diminished transfer rates. I believe I could feel my brain swelling as it tried to process all the new information. I remember experiencing the same head-splitting feeling on other occasions when I worked through difficult mathematical equations or complex computer programs. It is the feeling that comes as your brain is confronted with a large amount of new information and begins to make connections and associations and to build new neural pathways. But, this is great!!! It is the challenge I wanted.

The mode of instruction is very dialogical. Albertina is well trained and speaks Spanish 99.9% of the time, and makes good use of newspapers, pictures, objects and gestures. Today I learned numbers, time, dates and how to describe things and people. In one of the activities she gave me a Spanish language newspaper that was about 3 months old. The front page article was about Barack Obama and John McCain. I had to give descriptions of each person. I could use English words, then Antonia would say and write the corresponding Spanish word. For example, in describing Barack Obama, I would say, "el es married." Antonia would respond by saying and writing, "el es casado." I was then to know 'casado' means 'married' and use that word as I described other people.

It is now time to let my swelled neurons get some rest and return to normal. I hope sleep will facilitate the transfer of short-term memory to long-term memory - if I recall correctly that actually happens. I must get up at 5:45 tomorrow morning so Juan Carlos and I can leave the house by 6:45. Traffic in the morning is extremely slow and Juan Carlos was late to work this morning after dropping me off at CASAS. The picture is me in my bedroom.

Orientation

Click for pictures related to this blog

The first several days in Guatemala have been time for orientation and sightseeing. Two other groups are currently at CASAS: six students and a professor from Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS) and about 20 students and two professors from Eastern Mennonite University (EMU). The AMBS students are here for three weeks to study Guatemalan social and justice issues and how the church can respond to the challenges of Guatemalan society. The EMU group is here for about three months for language and intercultural study.

The SEMILLA/CASAS campus is very beautiful, the sun shines all the time (during this season), and the staff are very kind and helpful. When I heard about the latest snow storm in Goshen, I was so thankful to be in Guatemala!

I participate in some of the AMBS class sessions and on some of their cultural trips. Thursday we were given a brief tour of central Guatemala City (the old part of the city). To our surprise, we were then divided into groups of two and given a paper with questions we had to answer. Each question gave a street location in the city and some fact to find out about something at that location. Kelbessa (AMBS seminary student from Ethiopia) and I paired together. Our tasks were to 1) find the central city open market and inquire about the price of a pound of beans (about 64 cents) and a pound of rice (about 58 cents), 2) locate the city government offices and find out how many elected representatives are seated there (158), 3) locate the newspaper office and find out how many people read the newspaper each day (about 10,000, but we think that is low and the person giving the answer did not know the real answer or did not understand the question), and we had to find two graffiti writings. I think we did well, even though we felt quite helpless, especially in the crowded market. The market is a very large area under the street with many small shops, and we had difficulty finding the section with beans and rice. And at the government office no one at the information desk spoke English. Our paper with the questions was in English and Spanish, so we could show the Spanish part to people with whom we were conversing, but we still had to engage in additional conversation.

Friday morning I attended the AMBS class discussion, led by Willi Hugo, head of SEMILLA - the seminary branch of SEMILLA/CASAS. Even though I had not read through all the materials, I found the instruction and discussion very interesting. Friday afternoon I joined the EMU group for a general orientation to CASAS.

Today (Saturday) I went with the AMBS group to Antigua, one of the oldest cities in Guatemala. Antigua is surrounded by three large volcanoes. When Spain occupied the region, Antigua housed the central government for almost all of present-day Central America. Over the years, sections of the town were destroyed by earthquakes - the latest in 1773. In 1776 central government offices were moved to Guatemala City, the current capital of Guatemala. Antigua is a beautiful, colorful city with cobblestone streets, many beautiful old buildings, a great market area and many indigenous people.

So far I have not been sick. I always keep anti-diarrhea pills in my shirt pocket as a talisman against Montezuma's revenge, but expect that the forces of nature will win out at some time.

Life with my host family is great. Jose Luis and Olga are very patient with me!! They almost always speak to me in Spanish, and when I indicate I do not understand (about 99% of the time now), they then switch to English. Their English is limited, but far, far better than my Spanish. We resort to dictionaries many times. And we end up laughing about the difficulties and many mistakes. One example: the way I pronounce the word for 'daughter' is actually the word for 'cheek' - "My cheek has a son." "My cheek is 30 years old." "My cheek speaks Spanish." This Monday I begin formal Spanish lessons. Perhaps I will learn to properly aspirate my 'j' so people understand my daughter, not my cheek, will come to visit on February 25th.

Transition

I first noticed the transition as I entered the Miami airport. More people spoke Spanish. There were more Spanish signs and announcements. Then, as I entered the area for international departures, I became a minority who looked different from, and who did not understand most of what was being spoken by, the people around me. When I entered the airplane the stewardess addressed me in Spanish, and after noticing my blank look, switched to English and directed me to my seat. All this was fine. Part of what I hope to accomplish in this experience is to gain some understanding of what it is like for people to enter a new country/culture without knowledge of the language or customs. I expect to be uncomfortable - even though I know the extent of my unease will be tempered by my education, some basic understanding of Spanish, and being around people who do speak some English.

The flight was uneventful. I read part of the way and slept during the remainder of the time. I was a bit intrigued by the duct tape repair to the airplane ceiling panel - the first time I have seen that. A stewardess told me the type of the aircraft was quite old.

When I entered the Guatemala airport my cultural transition experience took a reverse turn as my eyes caught sight of a McDonalds restaurant - go figure!! Going through immigration and customs was a breeze. Jeff and Soila Eshleman met me at the Guatemala airport. It was not long until I was soundly asleep in the CASAS guesthouse.

Why Guatemala??

When I prepared my sabbatical plan, I decided I wanted to include an immersion experience in Spanish. After giving consideration to several options, I decided to attend the CASAS program associated with the Latin American Anabaptist Seminary (SEMILLA) in Guatemala City, Guatemala. There were several reasons I selected CASAS: 1) The program was highly recommended by several people who either knew about the program or had attended the program, 2) I appreciated the Mennonite connection, and 3) CASAS was interested in the possibility of me providing some computer assistance for them. For those of you from 8th St. Mennonite Church, Jessica Uhl and Joanne Gallardo attended CASAS.

Some people asked why I did not study Spanish in Goshen. That certainly was a possibility, but I wanted complete immersion - to be forced to have the experience of being a minority, a foreigner, and one who struggles to communicate. I know very little Spanish (only a few words) and the little German I know would not help at all. Also, I had never visited Central America and this seemed like a good time for a first visit - plus, I received a grant from the Goshen College Center for Intercultural Teaching and Learning to cover the cost of the trip.

I will be in Guatemala January 7 - March 4. The last week I am there my spouse, Eileen, and my daughter, Rachel, and her family (Tex and Josiah) will join me. My blog posts might be a bit irregular, so don't expect a day-by-day account. My host family in Guatemala will be Jose Luis Azurdia and Olga Piedrasanta - the parents of Juan Carlos who was an MCC Exchange Visitor at Goshen College and who attended 8th St. Church while he was hosted by Hornings and Yoders.