Day 50 - 69: Time for Tourism and Transition

Day 50-69: Time for Tourism and Transition

My last days in Tecpan, Enrichment week in Guatemala, and arrival in Bangkok, Thailand!

Dreamfood:

• I experienced Dia de los Santos with my Guatemalan host mom.
• I hiked to the famous view of Semuc Champey and swam in the beautiful turquoise waters.
• I watched the sun set atop of an ancient Mayan temple at Yaxha National Park and watched the sun rise and heard the jungle awaken atop another temple in the famous Mayan city, Tikal.
• I hikied through the jungles of Tikal in the frightening early hours (4 am) and saw many Tarantulas! 
• While exploring Tikal in the day time, we got to see the Agouti, Coati, Howler monkeys, and Toucans!
• I spotted the rare Quetzal, the national bird of Guatemala, at Biotopo de Quetzal.
• Explored Livingston, Guatemala on a nice boat tour.
• I kicked butt at Muay Thai class in Bangkok.
• We also visited the royal palace and reclining buddha. (And, I got dress-coded).

Homestay Heart:

• At the despadida, or goodbye party, Ana Maria presented us with gifts and notes along with some of the other host families. Her speech was trilingual; Spanish, Kaqchikel, and English.
• After the party, all of us were quite melancholy. But, for our last dinner, Ana Maria gave me my favorite, beans. She also gave us more gifts, including a wrapped present for our family. I didn't open it, but my roommate did. I know that it's a magnet which is super cute if you have a backstory. Ana Maria loves to travel and her fridge is covered in magnets from all the places she's traveled. So, I love that she gave my family a magnet. The first thing I bought in Thailand was a magnet to send to her at the end of my trip.
• We said goodbye the next morning, and she invited us to return anytime with our families. I'm never going to forget her.

Culturescape:

• I celebrated the holiday Dia de los Santos with my host mom, her sister, and some nuns.
• For Dia de los Santos; They celebrate with kites. Lots of kites! The sky is full of them. Some students even got to go to a large kite festival/parade. The pictures from that are super interesting. The kites get as big as buildings!
• There are also special dishes. Fiambre, consisting of; "numerous sausages and cold cuts, pickled baby corn and onion, beets, pacaya flower, different cheeses, olives, chicken, and sometimes even brussels sprouts"(1). I got a vegetarian version. Other dishes are atol de elote and tamales de elote. The first is a hot sweet corn drink; the consistency is weird but it's actually quite good. The tamale tastes more like a sweet corn dough than a tamale, but I enjoyed it with some tea.
• To celebrate, families travel to the cemetaries where their loved ones are buried. They create floral arrangements and spread what looked like pine leaves all over the cemetary. 
• My favorite part about this holiday is that they remember their ancestors and passed loved ones in a happy way. When I was at the cemetary, everyone was smiling and laughing; happy. It was beautiful. They were even happily digging a new grave (hopefully because it was that holiday and not because they were happy about that person's death...). 
• Now, moving on from Guatemala to THAILAND! All the food is insanely spicy, there's lots of rice, and it's very hard being a vegetarian in Bangkok especially since I don't speak the language.
• Speaking of the language, Thai, we got 4 hours of instruction in Thai. It was super interesting. The sentence structure is SO much more simple. For example, 'Are we going to eat now?' vs 'We go eat now yes/no?' I definitely don't have a grasp on the language after only 4 hours spread over 2 days, but I feel the potential to learn some of this language during my 7 week stay here.
• One of the oddest experiences I've ever had was experiencing culture shock... from a culture that wasn't my own. People from outside my group would speak to me in English and I would respond in Spanish. And, my go to culture for comparison was Guatemalan culture, not US culture. It was a definitely a first.

Readjustment:

• We spent 3 DAYS and 4 flights traveling to Thailand. We all skipped an entire day of our lives and of this trip! I never had a November 14th! I hopped on the plane at LAX on November 13 and got off in Manila on November 15.
• Jet lag was much harder this time for some reason. On my first trip to Chiang Mai this past summer, I had no problem adjusting to the time difference. But, this time around things were different. I kept waking up way too early in the morning and not being able to go back to sleep. Maybe part of it was me not wanting to let go of Guatemala...
• Transition is HARD. It feels like we are starting all over again. Just when I thought I had a grasp on the Guatemala, I got ripped away and reorientated all over again. It's exhausting. This trip has shown me that traveling like this is difficult. It made me rethink the college I planned on attending, LIU Global, where you spend every semester studying abroad in a new place.
• One thing that was refreshing compared to exhausting was our group and individual reflection of our goals. In Guatemala during orientation on Lake Atitlan, we wrote up goals for ourselves in the 5 areas of learning; academic, emotional, spiritual, social, and cultural. I had grown so much from that time, and it was so nice to see. Don't get me wrong, this trip is amazing, but it's also challenging and exhausting. I mean if it wasn't challenging, there would be no growth. It was so refreshing to reflect and see that all of this has really made an impact. I ranked my learning (1 being the most growth and 5 being the least) : 1) Academic, 2) Emotional, 3) Cultural, 4) Social, 5) Spiritual.

I can't wait to get this leg of the trip rolling. In Thailand, we learn about education and this was the subject I was most excited to learn about out of the three; Sustainability, Education, and Public Health. As exhausted and overwhelmed as I am, I'm exited to see what I will learn from the people and culture here, in Thailand.

Quick STORY TIME:
For every meal during enrichment week with our tour guides, we would get a list of the meals and write our name next to the one we wanted. One day, Victor, one of our guides, asked me right as I walked out of the bathroom at a gas station. Previously, I could not figure out how to work the sink, so I emerged to find another sink since I had already lathered my hands in soap. When Victor asked me, I had soapy hands and said that I'd write it after I got the soap off my hands. But, he insisted that I choose now and that he would write my name for me. So, that's what we did. Now, it came time for dinner, and everyone received their food before me. I was confused and asked to see the order slip since I assumed he must've forgotten to write my name. It turns out he just wrote 'autre chica'. So, call me autre chica now. (For those who don't know any Spanish, that means 'other girl'.)

Book Read/Media consumed:

• Whatever It Takes by Paul Tough
• Haven't made any progress..been too busy!!!
• The Country Who Voted for Trump by Frank Thomas a podcast about the current political situation in the US. Thomas has a view that I hadn't heard articulated in that way before. I highly suggest giving it a listen!

Human Highlight:
Nishtah Thomas, I really loved getting closer with her over the course of enrichment week.
Fun fact:
Mabuhay means welcome in Filipino.

Be reflective.

It's the best way to be.

"I WANT TO CHANGE THE WORLD! I have so much to learn and so little time to do it! I don't know how I could ever think anything else more important. Priorities shifted: right now." - Meg Fordyce

A quote from my journal. I wrote this Day 51/October 31 at 9:44 am. 

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

XOXO,

Autre Chica