Written By Mats & Wendy
With this week our two week stay at San Juan and our time at the beautiful Lake Atitlan has ended. After getting to know our new host families, another week of school started on Monday.
Some changed their teacher, but everybody sticked to improving their spanish skills in the magical school’s garden. With many games, dogs, and fun the hours of learning flew by, sometimes even in the form of cooking classes…
For example, last week there was a set of cultural/art classes to take in addition to Spanish. Divided into small groups we learned about the art of weaving, jaspe, embroidery and playing the Marimba. All the students learned something new, made memories, and created projects that they’ll take forward.
The hours between classes were spent in small groups visiting the town, going swimming, or flooding one of “our” cafes or tiendas.
The evenings were spent with different kinds of group activities. We finished the planning for our – now starting – week of student directed travel and were ready for more fun and serious activities. We had a game night and our MARVELOUS group leaders Wendy and Mats introduced us to their hobbies of “urban sketching” and creative writing. On Thursday evening we each shared two life changing days/events of ours to gain a deeper connections with each other. something for explanation).
To end our time at the Eco Spanish School, our teachers and host families invited us to a traditional Mayan fiesta in the school on Friday. We spent the school day preparing food and drinks before we put on traditional mayan clothing, which they requested, and started the fiesta, thanking the school and families, presenting our food and eating it soon afterwards.
As we have many nights before, we had to end our time in San Juan sitting and chatting at the docks at night.
Getting up early on Saturday we said “Adios San Juan” and made our way by boat to Panajachel where a bus picked us up to begin our week of student directed travel: a week at the Rio Dulce close to the Caribbean coast of Guatemala. The planned 8hrs car ride became a 12 hrs one when we got into a huge traffic jam without A/C in noons heat. But we made it with a Fried Chicken pitstop for dinner to the Backpackers Hostel in Rio Dulce.
Stunned by the warm and humid climate we slowly fell asleep.
Our first day in Rio Dulce started with a walk over Central Americas longest bridge to get all the stuff we need for another meal of Peanut Butter and Jelly for breakfast. We walked to the bus stop and hopped on a packed public bus to make our way to the nearby hot springs. Where we spent the day swimming in the pools, warming ourselves in the waterfalls or exploring nearby caves.
Happy and exhausted we drove with the same bus as we did in the morning back to Rio Dulce to make Tostadas for lunch. Because we lost track of time we had to rush back to the hostel to catch our boat (just 5 minutes) late to make our way to the Finca Tatin hotel our home for the next 5 days!