Hi friends and family! Shane and Maya here, we were assigned the role ¨Bilbo Bloggins¨ for this week, which means that we are responsible for the official group blog! We were all assigned roles, some are in the big leagues, and involve figuring out lodging and transportation for the group, and there are other jobs, like ours, that aren’t quite so serious! These will switch weekly though, so expect to hear from everyone.
We´ll recap on this past week, which started with all of us meeting at the airport. We then proceeded onto a 6 hour flight. We were all extremely exhausted, didn’t know one another, but it was still very exciting. Our group was met at the Guatemala City Airport by 2 vans from Earth Lodge, a backpacker´s retreat in the mountains overlooking Antigua.
We spent Wednesday through Saturday there, and enjoyed the incredible views, the yummy food, and a wide variation of orientation exercises. We played games involving string, talked about poop, and got to know one another very quickly. Some of us also learned to wash clothes the same way as the locals. This involved a large pool of fresh water and concrete sinks/washboards. We found out how difficult it is to dry clothes while basically inside of a cloud. Everyone hung their clothes up to dry and it promptly started to rain. This process took about 3 days in total, and we aren’t sure if Quintin´s clothes ever dried at all. The boys resorted to using a blowdryer, and at the end of that experience, the group was in agreement that everything smelled far worse than it had smelled initially. Duly noted.
On Friday we headed to Antigua for a scavenger hunt where we were finally set loose. And immediately got lost/realized how terrible our Spanish actually is. During this experience we were assigned multiple tasks, including one that involved getting a gift that the whole group could enjoy. This mainly consisted of flutes, strings for bracelet making, but most exciting of all, was the clown piñata that we named Shiddi. It has been decided that he is our mascot and we will carry him with us throughout the trip, as a symbol of joy and creepiness.
On Sunday we left for Pasac , a tiny Mayan village that is an hour or so outside of Xela. The group was apprehensive about the idea of homestays, but 3 days in, we realize that our fears were unfounded. We are spread throughout Pasac, but it takes about 10 minutes to walk from end to end so that doesn’t mean much. For the most part, we have our own rooms, but there are a few exceptions. Maya shares a room with two little boys, but Shane and Lizza take the cake. Shane shares his bed with his host father (don’t worry it’s a queen), and Lizza shares hers with her host mom and sister. Thus far in Pasac we have been really busy. Our day starts at 730am and is packed until after dinner. We hiked to a beautiful waterfall and Mayan altar, played a couple very muddy soccer games with the locals(Leigha was definitely the highlight, she was actually completely brown by the end), weeded the coffee field, baked bread, experienced insane amounts of rain, and celebrated Lizza´s 18th birthday last night. On Saturday we are off to Xela for 2 weeks of homestays and language schools, and we can´t wait! The trip is awesome, the group is great, and we can´t believe that these are our lives for the next 3 months!!! Everyone sends their love! Adios!