Written By Lindsey & Ella
On Saturday afternoon, at PLQ (the Spanish school), we split off into groups of two or three and met our host families. We all walked to our new homes carrying our heavy packs. Saturday evening we had the pleasure of cheering on the fútbol team, Xelaju, at their home stadium. Everyone had a blast singing and cheering on the team alongside their very passionate fans. Sadly the teams tied and to nobody’s surprise, it began to rain near the end of the game. The walk home was long as we sloshed through the flooded roads, and returned to our separate home stays.
On Sunday, we had an early morning and a long drive out to Xocomil, a Guatemalan water park. We began the morning going around as a group testing out each water slide with Matt’s expertise. After splitting off for the rest of the day, we all enjoyed the park’s unhealthy snacks, especially the papa twisters (fried potatoes on a stick). Everyone was exhausted after the day and most of us took a nap on the drive back.
Back to school we went, everyone with their same teachers as before. Similar to last week, we had class from 8:00-1:00 every day. However, this week we were able to put our Spanish to much use by speaking with our host families at meal times. We all learned so much about Guatemalan culture by living in local homes. A lot of us also participated in two more salsa classes, and had lots of laughs.
Wednesday, we joined at the hostel for an enlightened activity regarding privilege. We reflected and learned about what privilege means, and how it affects us and others. Earlier in the day, we had the opportunity to attend a lecture, where we learned a lot of information about Guatemalan politics. We were told of the corrupt government, and how voting seems like a clean cut democracy, but in actuality, it is solely based on money and power.
Thursday was our last day of Spanish classes. We were all very sad to say goodbye to our lovely teachers, but excited for the next phase of our trip. While preparing for our trek, those of us who decided to use our big packs put all of our other unnecessary items into flimsy garbage bags which were hauled all the way to the trekking office. Others felt as though their daypacks were adequate to fit everything they needed for the 3 day trek. There we learned about our upcoming days and participated in a little trivia. Some of us even won some nice hats!
Friday morning we woke up bright and early with our packed breakfasts to meet at the trekking office at 6am. From there we drove to a small Mayan community called Alaska, and started our 16 kilometer hike. Spirits were high on our first day out. We stopped for lunch at an old coffee processing center surrounded by lime trees which many of us had fun eating raw!
We had sandwiches with avocado, cucumber, tomato, onion, ham, and cheese. After a long break, we got back on trail and finished off the first day with a steep uphill to K’omonoj where we slept. We enjoyed the temescal and washed off the sweat from the day. After dinner, we participated in an activity called Circle. We all went around and answered the question that was prompted “What do you love most about yourself and why?” That night we slept as well as we could on the ground but were awoken by children’s music at 5:00am to celebrate a local birthday!
In the morning we had a delicious breakfast of rice, beans and eggs. At 9am we climbed up the steep mountain, and found ourselves in another Mayan town, Santa Clara, at about 3. We were able to enjoy another temescal and a nice warm dinner. That night we all slept in the same room and told ghost stories until we fell asleep. We woke up at 4am to Matt pounding on our door letting us know that we were expected to hike in 30 minutes. In the dark, we hiked for about 45 minutes. Once we made it to the top we enjoyed breakfast and watched the sun come up over the famous Lake Atitlan that we have been talking about since we arrived in Guatemala. We started the trek down to San Juan where we all met at a cafe. Our various backpacks and trash bags arrived at the cafe as well. We split up to eat lunch in town and finally headed to Atitlan Organics around noon on a very bumpy, windy yet extremely fun boat ride across the lake.
