Watching the world light up

I hiked up La Nariz again on Sunday. This time I left my house with a few friends around 4am and got to the top around 6:30am just in time to watch the sun rise. It was definitely epic watching the world light up starting with beautiful Lake Atitlan. After the lights were on we hiked a little further along the ridgeline and then down another camino back to San Juan. I probably won´t be posting anymore for a while. I´m leaving San Juan tomorrow on a week long trip to the northern jungle region of Guatemala called the Peten. I´m visiting two Mayan ruins sites, one with a lot of tourist services where I´ll stay at a hotel and one that I have to walk 2 days through the jungle to reach, which is still being excavated. Should be a crazy cool time. Hopefully my anti-malarial pills do their job.

Cheers,
Pat

San Juan Coffee Cooperative

More stuff from last week. On Friday I went on a Coffee Tour of the San Juan Coffe Cooperative, which is right by Centro Maya, where I volunteer. They have like 120 people that jointly own the coffee grown there, collectively operate it, and share in the profits. Everything is done organically and they export exclusively to California. Our friend Benedicto, who operates a Spanish school in San Juan had some extra spots for a tour for some of his students so I got to go for free. It was good to already know about the coffee making process because I wouldn´t have understood everything the guy said as well if I didn´t already have some prior knowledge. It was really cool and I had a very good cup of coffee after the tour. I stayed around and made photos of some of the guys working and they were all cool about me hanging out and shooting. Seeing everything that goes into making coffee and going through the process myself has definitely made me appreciate coffee more. When I get back home, I´m definitely going to make an effort to buy coffee from places that I know the local people benefit from the sale. It´d definitely possible with these locally owned organic cooperatives. During the tour there was a documentary film crew following our group for a promotional video about Guatemala´s Coffee industry. The San Juan cooperative was one of only two featured in the video as a model for the country.

As always, more photos to come soon. Cheers,
Pat

La Finca

The other day I went to a pretty remote beach with Joel and Sara, which was pretty sweet. From San Pedro we walked out on La Finca road, which then turns into a path that goes to this beach called La Finca. Good times.

Feliz Cumpleños

The birthday boy, Miguelito and his mom.



Miguelito and his grandmother... and great-grandmother on the right.



An entertaining and very weird performance that some of the staff at the center put together.



Romeo hits the piñata.



Everyone grabs for the candy.



(From left) Delfina and Victoria cut the birthday cake.


I'm not entirely sure how the family is connected to the center, but on Friday we had a big birthday celebration for Miguelito´s first birthday (little Miguel). The family brought in lots of food, pop, candy, and cake for everyone and it was a lot of fun. That´s correct, two big parties in the same week. The photos from the parties and probably some others I´ve taken will be used in a little newsletter the staff is trying to start telling the parents about what´s going at the center. So if they actually get that going, my photos will grace the page(s) for this month.

Celebrating Valentines Day

Romeo goes down the slide after much convincing.



(From bottom) Fransisco, Ishmucanay (horribly misspelled), and Victoria



Victoria (mother of the family I live with) dancing with Romeo, framed between Maria and Lucas.



The clown.



Rosalia dances with a little assistance.


I´m a little backlogged on posting so I´m starting with last week and working my way back. Since Valentine´s Day was on a weekend, we celebrated last Wednesday with everyone from the center at a park near the lake in San Juan. It was a great time and all the kids really enjoyed it. There was music, a clown/interesting skit that I didn´t understand, games, and food.

Wandering

Coffee

I´m currently in the process of making my own coffee. Here, they use the verb cortar (to cut) when describing picking the coffee so when we usually talk about it in English, we generally say cutting coffee rather than picking coffee. Anyway, I cut coffee with Jenna once during the week and then again with Joel on Saturday both times in the coffee trees at Bob and Jeanne´s house. These photos somewhat show the process. Jenna and I did a small batch of coffee for her (maybe an eighth or quarter pound), which she took with her when she headed back home yesterday, and now I´m currently drying a batch for me- probably about a half pound.

There are many different ways to do this and pretty much everyone I ask tells me they do it a different way. I´m going to describe the process that Bob says is the best, or has heard from legit coffee people that its the best way. So after picking the coffee you need to take off the fruit surrounding the bean (demonstrated in photos 2, 3, and 6). Sometimes its easier to do in water after they´ve been soaking a bit. In photos 2 and 3 Jenna is doing it by hand and in photo 6, Joel is doing it with a very handy contraption owned by the family that we live with. Then you let the beans ferment in their own juices for 36 hours, or until you see bubbles, in an open plastic bag. After that you wash the beans until the water you´re washing the beans with becomes clear. Then you let the beans dry in the sun for 3-4 days. After the beans are dry you then take off one more layer, a little shell surrounding the coffee bean, which should be green after you take off the white casing. Then you roast the beans. My current batch is drying and should be ready tomorrow or the next day. Then I´m going to take them to a place in San Pedro that roasts coffee and I´ll take it home to enjoy in a few weeks.

I need to make more photos

The weekend went by pretty quickly and now I´m back into my weekend routine volunteering in the mornings and hanging out, doing random stuff in the afternoons and evenings. Friday night a bunch volunteers and some other friends had a bonfire, which was pretty sweet. Bob played guitar and we sang along with the songs we knew and conversed in the several different languages that were represented there. Another volunteer, Joel, from England moved back into the house I´m staying in after a month-long trip to Mexico. He got in on Saturday and since then we´ve been hanging out with Jasmina and Fry, two of the kids at the house, and playing a lot of games.

Lately I´ve gotten into a really relaxing slow pace of life- hanging out with people, going to the market, cooking, sitting in the hammock and reading, etc. It´s really great but I haven´t been making as many photos as I´d like to. So this week and from now on I´m resolving to shoot a lot everyday. So, by my next post the success or failure of that idea will be apparent. Until then, these are a few photos from hanging out with Joel and the kids at mi casa and a couple from volunteering.

Cheers,
Pat

Another Week

Gaspar, left, is one of the kids at Centro Maya that now goes to the regular school in San Pablo. He has a skin condition that causes blisters to form all over his body, which makes daily life harder for him.



Bob and Jeanne have a series of gardens for some of the families in San Juan and San Pablo next to their house in San Juan. Here, Domingo´s mom tends to her patch.



This is another family I visited with Jeanne before she flew back to the US. They´re digging a hole for a bathroom, which has to be about 10 meters deep. One of the kids is in the hole digging and then they haul the dirt up with a pulley system.



Other family members watch the work.



Jenna does some physical therapy with Rosalia, one of the kids at the center. Usually I help feed her at snack time.



The single muelle (dock) for San Pablo.



The week isn´t quite over, but I thought it a good time to post anyway. The photos are all from this week, but it´s definitely a hodgepodge of different things this time. This week has gone by pretty fast. I visited a few more families with Jeanne and will probably go back to shoot more with one of them this weekend. Other than that I´ve mostly been cooking for myself, reading, and hanging out with people. Not too much else to say. More to come soon.

Adios,
Pat

Hiking La Nariz and the rest of the Weekend

On Saturday I hiked up La Nariz (the nose), which is one of the highest peaks on the lake. Sitting about 2,200 meters tall, it´s definitely not the highest point on the lake, but it is one of the only high points that isn´t a volcano. I´ll definitely have to hit some of the volcanoes soon as well. This peak is called La Nariz because the part of the mountains there look like a Mayan face, with the tallest point being the nose. I went with Jenna and her friend Luis, who was her Spanish teacher in San Pedro and now she lives with him and his family in San Juan. In addition to being a Spanish teacher he also happens to be a mountain guide. He told us that when he was a kid he would hike this same route to go to the market in Santa Clara on the other side of the mountains on Saturdays with his family, carrying goods to sell. It was a really beautiful hike and the higher we climbed the views of the lake got better and better. After we checked out the summit, we continued on the trail to Santa Clara and I got some onions and peppers at the mercado. We also stopped for more water and bought some chicken salad tostadas from a street vendor, which were real good.
After we got back I took a nap and then later Jenna and Luis came over to my pad and I cooked up some beans, corn, onions, and peppers, which we ate with rice, cheese, and tortillas. Twas delicious, especially after a tiring day. On Sunday I went with Jenna to San Pedro and watched the super bowl in a sports bar there. It was definitely an interesting environment to watch it in, since most of the people who would be in San Pedro don´t strike me as the types that would be into sports anyway. We hung out with a group of people from the same hostel that had their faces painted red and white for Arizona. None of them were from Arizona. It was a pretty fun time drinking beer out of glasses from big one liter glass bottles that I would buy from a tienda downstairs because they were cheaper than at the bar.

Best,
Pat

El Primero Semana con los Niños

The first week with the kids... Last week the kids finally started at Centro Maya and I´ve now gotten into somewhat of a routine living here. I´ve been going every week day at 8am to the center, which is about a 10 minute walk from the house where I´m living. I meet some other people there and then we go in either a mini bus or a pickup truck to San Pablo, another one of the villages on the lake (about 4 or 5 km away) and pick up kids there that attend the center. Right now there are a lot of smaller children that come for physical therapy so the women teachers and assistants handle them while I generally help get Domingo, a 14 year old that uses a wheelchair, in and out of the bus or truck. Then once we get all the kids from San Pablo to the center, classes and therapy starts around 9am. I do random tasks and help whoever needs some help at the time.
Lately I´ve been doing some muscle and balance exercises with one of the kids that one of the physical therapists showed me how to do. So that´s been pretty cool. Otherwise I help feed the kids at snack time and then help with brushing teeth after snacks. Then around noon I go back to San Pablo in the bus or pickup and take the kids back to their houses. We had cake on one of the afternoons to celebrate being back in school. It was pretty delicious- lots of fresh fruits on it.
Domingo, pictured in the last two photos above, just started going to school in the afternoons at the public school in San Pablo after his morning activities at the center. Guatemala just passed a law that says all public schools have to allow children with handicaps attend. Thats definitely a good thing, but they really don´t have much in the way of infrastructure to make that happen. Since there are no ramps at the public shool in San Pablo someone has to carry Domingo up the stairs and someone else has to carry the wheelchair. It´s definitely not an easy process getting him started there and getting the routine down to get him there but hopefully it´ll get easier every day.
So when I get back from San Pablo around 1pm or so, I pretty much have the rest of the afternoon free. Generally I cook myself lunch, do dishes, laundry, read, lay in my hammock or hang out with some of the other volunteers. It´s definitely a pretty relaxing lifestyle and a huge change of pace from the go go go pace of life at home. I always have something to do here, but theres never too much.