Day 1-12: Bienvenidos a Guatemala!

Day 1-12: Bienvenidos a Guatemala!

The adventure begins...

Dreamfood:

• I stayed right on the water of the most beautiful lake in the world, Laguna Atitlan.
• I swam in the natural hot springs and beautiful waters of of said lake.
• I (sort of) hiked the mountain I saw from my hotel room everyday where there was the 'mayan man in the mountain'. (the view from the first checkpoint is the featured pic)
• I hiked to the top of Volcan Pacaya and roasted marshmellows from the natural heat.
• I danced with a belly dancer at a hookah bar in Antigua, Guatemala.

Culturescape:

• Tortillas are everything.
• I experienced Dia de la Independance. There was a parade in town, San Juan la Laguna, and it was surprisingly progressive. They marched with banners displaying thing they didn't want in a government; corruption, injustice, unrest, etc. 
• I attended a staged traditional Mayan wedding. Where I learned....
• Weaving is a big part of their culture. I also went to a place where women worked together to make natural dyes and then use the natural dyed cotton to weave beautiful creations.
• Most modern Guatemalans are Christian, more specifically catholic. But, there are still some trying to preserve their Mayan culture. 
• Mayan wood is cut at the point when the moon is the fullest, and they would only take what they needed. This is done because they believed that the earth was it's strongest at full moon and therefore could handle the loss of wood. Afterwards, they would perform a ceremony to thank the earth and to apologize. These ceremonies were performed out in nature. There are still some that practice tis today, but they are often discriminated against because it is seen as witchcraft.
• Many Guatemalans in the towns I've been to (San Juan la Laguna, Antigua) especially women still wear their traditional dress. A fun fact is that each has a representation of respect for their spouse in their clothing.
• So, most Americans would believe that the women here are 'discriminated against', but that's not how this culture sees it. In this culture women and men both assume specific roles in the family. The women cook, clean, and take care of children. The men work long days as farmers. Now, the woman's job is considered harder and she is highly respected for that. They send the man off to do the dirty work out of respect of women not despite. These values are deeply rooted in Mayan culture.

Learning curve:

• I definitely am in need of improving my Spanish, as most people I'm interacting with are not bilingual. 
• Taking freezing showers is the new norm.
• As well as, throwing toilet paper in the trash can, NEVER in the toilet.
• Sometimes street food literally can kill you. Two people have gotten really sick already.
• Wearing sunscreen in really important when taking malaria medicine.
• I thought I would have a different role in this group but I'm learning to accept mine now.
• Kitten is phonetically 'chi-key-ta' in Spanish
• This program is A LOT. I'm lowkey overwhelmed.

Program/Academics:

We started many different seminar 'units' during orientation.

• 'Who Am I?" - This seminar is all about finding yourself and we get to do that with other people doing that same thing too. We started this seminar off with 'rivers'. Rivers are basically your life story and everyone drew out their river and shared. It was an amazing way to start off just knowing who all the people I'm about to spend 7 months of my life with are and where they cam from. 
• 'What is Development?' - We've done a few of these where we explore this question. I'd honestly not thought a lot about it before this program, but now it's hard to ignore. TBB teaches you to always answer with a question. Who is responsible to develop whom? Is 'development' just modern imperialism and ethnocentrism?
• We also did a lot of talks about safety and explored the harder topics that follow that like being a woman traveller and how we can't ignore that it is different and there are extra precautions you need to take as a woman.

Overall:

I'm so ready. This group is now my family, and there's so much ahead of us. But, I say....

Bring it on.

Human Highlight:
Peter, my 'mento' and program leader, for helping me through some tough times during orientation.

Fun Fact:
In Guatemala, a common response you hear to "Gracias" is "Para ce vide" (unsure of spelling???) which translates to at your service.

"BE wise"

This actually a quote from our CCS president of Guatemala, Juan Carlos, when talking about safety which is a lot of what we did during orientation.

But, I've learned how important it is to make wise decisions about safety. Especially food wise because we've already had two people down from food related illnesses. We are also about to move to Guatemala City; the most dangerous place that TBB has taken students, so I will definitely try my best to make wise decisions there.

"There are only two emotions; love and fear" - Oprah 
(quoted at the end of a development seminar by Matty)

Click here to see a video from my time in Guatemala!

Keep thinking,
Meg

(posted 10 days after it was written due to technical difficulties)