Bienvenido a Mexico!!

As a U.S. citizen I automatically receive a 90-day traveler's visa when I enter Guatemala. The problem is when I want to stay here for 11 months...I have to make a few visa runs. Apparently it's super common and there are U.S. citizens who have lived here for years (like 10-15) and have been making a run to Mexico every 90 days that whole time (apparently it's a lot easier than getting residency). Well, my first 90-day stint happened to fit almost perfectly with my trip back home for my mom's wedding (I stayed for 98 days so I had to pay a fee of Q.80...about $10, when I left), but this time I was not so lucky. My 90 days were coming to a close and I figured I might as well hop over to Mexico while I was already practically on the border for my weekend classes in Malacatan.
Getting to the border was a piece of cake. I got into a taxi with a few other people and we each paid Q.5 for the 20-minute ride (that's less than $1!). Once we arrived at the border, however, I had no idea what I was supposed to do or where I was supposed to go. So I started walking towards something that looked very border-like and asked someone where I go to get my passport stamped. She pointed out the immigration window to me and I started to make my way over. On my way there were a few guys asking me if I needed to change any Guatemalan Quetzales to Mexican Pesos...so I changed Q.400 and got super ripped off on the exchange rate (I really should have researched more thoroughly the current rate and had a better idea of how much I should be getting...my bad), but got to the window and had an exit stamp added to my passport. Before I knew it, there was this guy showing me where to go to get all the way through the border and where to catch another taxi to Tapachula (apparently it's a great city...I didn't receive quite the same impression). When I got into the cab the guy asked me for a tip. This was fair because I really had no idea where I was supposed to be going and he really helped me out, so I gave him a tip. But then there was this other guy telling me that I should also be giving him a tip because he was the owner of the taxi or something like that....I gave him nothing because the first time I'd seen him was about 45 seconds earlier, what was I supposed to tip him for?!
Anyways, as we got into Tapachula the driver asked me where I was going and I told him the address of a hotel that I'd read about on a forum about visa runs to Tapachula. He told me that hotel was on the other side of town and that he'd help me find a place closer to the center. It really made no difference to me, as long as I wasn't charged an arm and a leg for a hotel room. The first place we stopped wanted MX$400 a night (that's about $30US or Q.250...I make Q.25 an hour, so no way, especially after getting gyped on  the exchange at the border). So we headed to another place. The driver told me he thought this other place charged MX$150 a night, but he wasn't sure. So we went in and I asked how much a room cost. The guy asked me if I wanted the price per night or per hour. Gross. Per night. MX$150. Great, so I asked if they had space available. He said no, but they'd have a free room at 6pm. Gross. I really didn't want to stay in a hotel room that had just been rented out for a couple hours. But I really didn't have any other options so I said I'd be back at 6. I headed to the central park to walk around and find some food. I went into a little torta restaurant (tortas are delicious Mexican grilled sandwiches...if you haven't had one, you need to go find the nearest taco truck and get one) and read my book for a while and ate, of course. Eventually I got tired of just sitting there and toting my backpack full of heavy books that I had to bring for my classes, so I decided to walk around in search of a different hotel nearby. I found one for only MX$60 a night and decided that for that price, it really didn't matter how gross it was and it was only one night. I don't know what was going on with the manager though because I asked how much they charged per night, he told me, then he asked "is that all you wanted?" So I said, "No, do you have space?" And he looked super confused and said, "space?" Apparently I wasn't clear enough or something so I asked "do you have a room available that I could stay in?" So he let me in and showed me a super ghetto room (pictures below), but I really didn't care so I went into the office to "check in." Check-in at that hotel means writing down the occupant's name and how many nights they're staying. No I.D. check, nothing. Also, he asked me for my name and he thought I said Yulisa and so that's what he wrote.

My light switch and who knows what kind of outlet!

This is how I "locked" my door

My bed, complete with a single sheet and a weird smell

 Needless to say, I thought it would be a good idea to sleep with my mace close by. Thankfully nothing happened, it was just loud and hot and hard to sleep, but nothing dangerous. Haha! Well I got up early to head back to Xela. The weirdo manager was trying to tell me that I should stay another night because it was Sunday and I should wait to travel until Monday....but I'm pretty sure the reason I chose to travel on Saturday/Sunday was so that I could still work Monday. Weirdo!! Anyways, I got back to the border and the same guy was there to "guide" me through the border process again and to show me where to catch a cab back to Malacatan (apparently the fact that I'd just been there the day before and knew where things were didn't seem to cross his mind). I changed my pesos back to quetzales and didn't get as badly ripped off, but still a whacky exchange rate. A little further through the border process there were about 6 guys waving money in my face telling me that I needed to change my pesos to quetzales because I couldn't spend pesos in Guatemala. It didn't matter how many times I told them I didn't have any pesos, they just kept telling me that I needed to change my pesos. Then when we were nearly to the taxis some other guy came up asking me where I was going (also trying to "help" me find a bus/taxi). He started listing places so I just said I was going to Malacatan and he pointed out a microbus (the ones that are basically just vans) I could get onto so I asked him how much it cost and he told me Q.20. I said, "How is it Q.20?! I paid Q.5 for a taxi yesterday!!" (by this point I was really frustrated with everyone trying to "help" me) And right then we just so happened to be right next to a taxi headed to Malacatan for (you guessed it!) Q.5. I peaced out and finally got back to familiar land then took my two buses back to Xela and made it in time for church (p.s. I started going to a different church with Spanish services and I really like it, except I only understand about 75% of what's being said because I have yet to learn all of the church-y Spanish)....kind of. I was half an hour late, but in Guatemalan time that's only like 5 minutes late. Unfortunately I felt super gross during the whole service because I didn't have time to shower and I didn't shower at the hotel because the shower was super gross and they didn't have towels....so, yeah.
Anyways, I have another 90 days here...so basically 90 days to figure out how to not go through all that again. When my friend Matt went to renew his visa he just paid the border officer to stamp him in and out without actually going into Mexico...maybe I'll do that next time. This trip just re-affirmed that I'm not a traveler, at least not by myself. I love seeing new places, but if I'm going to go somewhere by myself it's going to be to do something, not just to visit. It's boring and stressful and stupid traveling alone...at least in my opinion. I would say that this was one of those experiences that I'm glad I had but I hope I'll never have to have again. Thanks to all of you who have been praying for me, there's no way I could've survived that without God watching out for me!!

The rainy season is upon us

Apparently umbrellas aren't just for tourists here

A little rain never stopped people from selling food in the park

When I first arrived in Xela it was winter. At night and in the morning it got incredibly cold...ok fine, it was like 0°C, but it felt really cold because in the afternoons it would warm up to 15-20°C. But during all of this time there was no rain. It snowed in San Marcos (a city about 2 hours away from Xela), and by snowed I mean there was maybe an inch of snow and it was all over the newspapers. Kinda like in western Washington. Anyways, in all the time I'd been here, it'd rained only a handful of times and only for about an hour and then it was done. Well all that has changed now. About 2 weeks ago it just started raining and it's been cloudy and drizzly with big passing thunderstorms ever since. Sure, there have been some sun breaks, but not like before. It's so weird that it will be sunny and then it starts sprinkling and before you know it you can't hear yourself think because the rain is so loud on the roof, not to mention the giant booms of thunder. I absolutely love it! I only wish I had brought my rain boots.
It's almost always drizzly in Tacoma, but there are hardly ever big downpours where it feels like the sky has to run out of water soon. A bright flash of lightning, closely followed by the huge boom of thunder. Here it's an every day occurrence. It's beautiful! Sure, walking to and from work from
where I catch the bus kind of sucks when it's dumping rain....especially when a car drives by just fast enough that the river running through the road decides it'd have more fun all over you, but hey, asi es la vida!
Apparently Guatemalan engineers don't know how to think ahead, however, so the drainage system is pretty non-existent. When it really rains the roads become mini-rivers that are impossible to cross without completely soaking at least one of your feet. But it's kinda fun making crossing the street a game: find the high spot in the road that's not yet submersed in water so you can cross without landing ankle-deep in a puddle.
I don't know why, but it's so beautiful to me how it can be sunny one second and then dumping rain and rolling thunder the next. When I was flying into Guatemala city for the first time by myself in December there was a lightning storm in the distance and I just watched it for the last half hour of my flight. It was amazing to just watch a chunk of the sky light up for a fraction of a second. Now when there's lightning it usually lights up the whole academy where I work, or the power goes out. It's a little alarming to be teaching a class at night and then it's like someone is flashing giant flood lights just outside the window, but it's amazing! Maybe it's that in Tacoma (where I've pretty much spent my entire life up until this point) there's hardly ever lightning. It makes the front page of the Tribune when there is (you know the picture I'm talking about, a big lightning bolt in the sky with the Narrows Bridge in the background...same one every time). So even though it happens every day here, I'm still amazed by it every time. I'm still amazed by how incredible loud the rain can be, especially at my weekend spot in Malacatan.
What about you? Is there something that you encounter frequently but it still manages to sweep you off your feet every time?

Why I hate sharing a kitchen with strangers

My apartment is pretty cool...I mean, it's not awesome, it's pretty basic, but it's right in the center of the city which is great for taking the bus to and from work and also great for going out at night (I don't have to take a taxi home). There are, however, some things that drive me crazy about my apartment. The building's acoustics are really good, which means that every sound from the street comes right up the stairs and into my room, plus every sound from the kitchen goes down the hall and into my room....but it's not so bad, I'm pretty used to it now and I can sleep through anything (for those of you who have ever shared a room with me, you already know this about me). The lighting in my room is not so great; there are three lights on my ceiling and there are usually only two that work, but sometimes only one is working and it's a pretty high ceiling so at night it gets a little dim in my room sometimes. The whole lighting thing sucks for when I'm trying to skype with people because I always look like I'm in the dark...but that's not even the worst of my skyping problems: the internet here sucks!! Sometimes it works fine and I can skype for 5 hours with minimal interruptions, but usually it's more like 15 minutes and then the call is dropped, 3 more minutes and the call is dropped again, and after doing this for about half an hour it just stops working. It makes keeping up with people back home pretty difficult.
But all of these things, though annoying, are livable. I'm a pretty easy-going person, so I can roll with the quirks....but sharing a kitchen with strangers is killing me!! Maybe working in the kitchen at camp has ruined me for using all future kitchens because my expectations are now quite high (ok, maybe it's not a maybe, I'm pretty sure it's true. Ask Rory, we're kitchen snobs because of camp.....sorry kitchen at Gleanings!). But really, is it so hard to clean up after yourself?

This is what I wake up to almost every morning. And keep in mind that I usually work early so I'm in there at around 5:45AM trying to make breakfast as quietly as possible for the poor guy who has a room closer to the kitchen than I do. Making breakfast quietly is really hard when I have to first dig out the dirty dishes that I need to use and then wash them. And who wants to wash their dishes before and after using them? Because there's one lady who lives here who is apparently always calling the dueño (manager) and telling him that I'm leaving a bunch of dirty dishes, so there's no way I can wash the dishes, use them, and then leave them dirty.

But sometimes there are no dirty dishes in the sink and as I walk into the kitchen ready to make my dinner because I'm super hungry from a long day of work, I get really excited that maybe it'll all be clean. But no. All the pots and pans are on the stove....full of food that has been cooked, served, and the people who made it are in their rooms eating. At this point I don't even have the option of washing the dirty dish before and after use because they're all full of other peoples' food...and you can't just throw their food into a Tupperware and put it in the fridge because you have no idea whose food it is and everyone has a designated spot in the fridge. Speaking of which.....

There's never room in the fridge because there's 5 of everything. Everyone has their own little area. I have the bottom drawer. There's always so much crap in the fridge and I just don't get it!! And in a family fridge there's no "my food" and "your food," but I'm positive that someone took half of a lime that I had in my drawer and I was instantly really upset when I realized it...over half of a lime. Plus people put dumb stuff in the freezer! A few weeks ago some of my neighbors threw a huge party on our terrace before a soccer match and I guess they thought it was a really good idea to put 3 liters of beer in the freezer and then they left them there. The next day I went grocery shopping and opened the freezer to put my chicken in there and the instant that I opened the freezer a bunch of beer-slush fell out onto me...not to mention chunks of the shattered bottle. Genius. 

 And there are rules:
1. After you cook, leave that area clean.
2. Wash your dishes after using them.
3. Don't take dishes to your room, we need all of them.
4. Make sure all your trash is thrown in the trash can.
5. Take care of the appliances, don't get the stove dirty, or the microwave.
6. Don't spill liquids on the stove.

Remember that the cleanliness starts for each one the same. Take very good care of the things that we                                                                                  offer you! Thank you for your help and understanding!

So really, it's not like there are no guidelines here. The only one that I really don't follow is the not taking dishes to your room. The kitchen is a terrible place to eat, it's really uncomfortable. So I eat in my room and then take my dishes back to the kitchen and wash them within an hour of finishing my food. Some other people, however, I swear have a stockpile of dishes in their rooms! We recently acquired more silverware, but when I first moved in there were maybe 7 forks, 2 spoons, and 1 butter knife...and 1 sharp knife. More often than not there were no silverware in the kitchen. It makes eating a little hard. And preparing food is hard too when there's nothing to cut stuff with. So when I went home for a week in March I made sure to bring back a set of silverware and I've bought a couple knives here....I try to keep all of the dishes that I've bought in my room because otherwise they disappear. In fact, just the other day I had a knock on my door from the lady who keeps calling the manager to complain about stuff and she was telling me that I took her container and she wanted it back. Here's the thing: it was my container and it had disappeared a week or two earlier and I later found it in the fridge. Empty. Who leaves an empty container in the fridge?! But sometimes it's not just plates and silverware that people take to their rooms. The other morning I wanted to make a cup of tea, but the kettle was nowhere to be found. Who takes a kettle to their room?! And there have been countless times when I wanted to make pasta or something and the pot that I needed to use was nowhere in the kitchen. I'm starting to fear that I'll go into the kitchen one day to make toast and the toaster will be gone because someone wanted to make toast from the comfort of their room. 

I'm sure the people I live with are great people in real life, but for sharing a kitchen they're making me crazy! Sometimes the dish soap runs out (by that, I mean that it runs out about every 2 weeks) and people just stop washing their dishes. After a day or two of no soap there are no longer any clean dishes. Makes cooking and eating a bit difficult. After I get sick of both sinks overflowing with dirty dishes and not a clean dish in sight, I got downstairs to the Q.3 store and buy some dish soap. Seriously, there's a little Q.3 store just downstairs yet no one else can seem to manage to go buy some soap. Q.3 is less than 50cents USD....it's not like we have to have the fancy stuff. 

Ok, I'm done complaining now. I've been incredibly blessed here in Guatemala with everything from a great Spanish school, great friends, a great place to live, and a great job. If an annoying kitchen is all I have to complain about I think I've got it pretty good. But seriously, if you share a kitchen with someone who's worked in a commercial kitchen for 8 years (or really, even if they haven't!), pretty pretty pretty please clean up after yourself and keep in mind that other people need to use all the stuff in the kitchen too.

Malacatan, San Marcos, Guatemala

This month I've started traveling to a city called Malacatan on the weekends to teach English classes. If you're looking at the above map, point B is Malacatan and the solid white line just to the left of it is the Mexican border. Malacatan is a little city in the department of San Marcos (Guatemala has departments, not states) and when I go there I'm pretty sure I am the only white person those people have ever seen (with the exception of the teacher who went before me). In the academy that I work at we change teachers every two weeks for weekday classes and every month for weekend classes, but the previous teacher who'd been going to Malacatan had been going for the last 7 months....so I could potentially be going over there every weekend until I head back to the states.
I love the city; it's small and fairly easy to navigate, the majority of the traffic is due to the many tuk-tuks they have running from place to place (see the photo below if you don't know what I'm talking about when I say tuk-tuk), and the people I've met there have been really nice and really helpful if I've had questions about anything.

My students over there are also pretty cool. I have a class with 3 kids (two boys and a girl, 13-14 years old) and then another class with a boy who I think is about 8. Normally, I don't like teaching kids because they don't really want to learn, and that's kind of true of these kids too, but we have a good time. They all love playing soccer so whenever we take a break from class that's what they wanna do (both classes are 4 hours each, so we take a lot of breaks to play games). The class with 3 kids also likes to play spoons...but the kind where you put the spoons in random spots around the room so even if you're the one who got the set of 4 you might not get a spoon. Haha! 

The only thing I really don't like about Malacatan is that it is so hot all the time. It's humid and just straight-up hot, so when I play soccer with my students I get wiped out really quickly from the heat. I learned very quickly that the only way to survive over there is to wear a skirt instead of jeans and to wear an airy shirt instead of my thick work polo....and I also need to drink way more water than here in Xela. Really, if it weren't so hot over there I'd be totally fine with going every weekend until I leave Guatemala, but it is so hot and only getting hotter as summer/the rainy season is starting to kick-in. Oh yeah, I love the rain here! I mean, I like the rain in Tacoma, but I've always loved thunderstorm rain way more...there's intense thunderstorm rain here with thunder and lightning and everything, plus it's not freezing cold here when it rains!! 

The city is 3.5-4 hours away from Xela by bus, and I have to take two buses to get there. So yeah, I spend about 8 hours on a bus so that I can give 8 hours of classes, but I stay the night over there and it's way more relaxing than getting up at 3:30AM on Saturdays to travel to Huehue to teach (that's what I was doing all last month). Plus it's conveniently located right by the Mexican border so that when I need to border-hop to renew my visa I'll already be right there. (Actually, I need to do that in the next few weeks...I'll let y'all know how it goes)

Funny/super gross Malacatan story #1 (ok, fine, there's only one so far...but I'm hoping for more in the future): My Saturday morning class is with the 8-year-old boy and he has a little wiener dog that doesn't understand the meaning of personal space/seriously, don't jump up on me. So I was playing soccer with my student and all of a sudden the maid starts calling his name, telling him to come quick because the dog ate a mouse. The dog's running around with a little tail hanging out of its mouth and then it spits out the mouse on the floor....this mouse is just a little baby and it would've been so cute if it weren't a mouse and if it hadn't just come out of the dog's mouth. Well the mouse is still alive and it's kinda wiggling around so the dog eats it again and we're running after the dog trying to make sure he doesn't spit the mouse out somewhere we can't find it. The dog spits out the mouse again and this time it's dead. So we block the dog from being able to eat it again while the maid sweeps up the poor little mouse to throw it away. We're all super grossed out by this and my student is running around the house yelling "Que asco!!! Que aaasssssccccoooooo!!!!!" (basically it means, so gross!) I mentioned already that the dog is really an up-in-your-grill kind of dog, right? Well the dog keeps trying to lick me, but I know what's been in that mouth and I don't want that all over my legs....so we were pretty grossed out by that, but life went on. We continued with our class and started working in the book again, but then the dog jumped up on the couch and started making sounds like it was going to throw up. Sure enough, it threw up on the couch. "Aaaahhhhhh!!! Que asco!!!!!!!!!" But it gets worse....the dog jumped back up onto the couch and ate all of its barf. So we jump up and start running around the house being super grossed out, my student is yelling "Que asco!!! Que asco!!" and I'm trying really hard to think about something else so that I too don't barf and watch the dog eat that too. Of course, we had a great laugh about it, but still. So. Gross. I never want to have a little dog like that because I'm pretty sure I'd be reminded of what happened last Saturday every time I'd see the dog. 

Anyways, yeah, so I'm going to Malacatan every weekend and it's a pretty great place (minus the suffocating heat). If you've tried to reach me during the weekend and I haven't responded it's because I don't bring my computer with me...I already have enough stuff to take with me, there's no space for my computer, also I don't want it to get jacked.

3 weeks of wonderful madness

I'm just going to start by saying that I have to coolest family ever!! My dad, Bouakham, and Steve came down to Guatemala with me to hang out for 3 weeks and it's crazy to think that those three weeks are already coming to a close. Dad and BK leave tomorrow at way too early and Steve's leaving Wednesday probably early afternoon. These past 3 weeks (well, 4 if you count to one that I spent back home) have flown by!! I feel like we haven't really done anything, but I guess we've done quite a bit and I think my family (at least part of it) now understands why I want to spend so much time here.

Steve on his horse for our 3-hour horse tour

You already know about our hike to the mirador of Santiaguito (that is, if you read my last post...) and since then we've rocked Holy Week in Xela, gone to San Andres Xecul to see the big yellow church, the zoo, el baul, Lake Atitlan, Xetulul (a theme park, similar to a Six Flags park), los Vahos, a Xelaju MC soccer match and....I feel like we did more, but now I can't remember.  We've been doing stuff the whole time and it's been super awesome to have them here, and I'm also exhausted now. Haha! Who would have thought that playing tour guide, translator, and trying to spend every moment that I'm not working with my family would tire me out?! As you may already be aware, my dad is the photographer of the family so I didn't take a ton of pictures while they were here....if you want a play-by-play of pretty much everything we did, beg my dad for pictures.

On the boat between Panajachel and San Pedro on Lake Atitlan

Me and my friend Patty at the theme park, Xetulul

My dad was hoping to get stepped on by the horse to heal his guppy elbow

BK rocking the bumper cars!!

Timo, Patty, me, and Matt at Xetulul

The slides at El Baul

We spent a lot of time in the market and I spent a lot of time translating and trying to get a better price. This is how a typical market trip would go: Bouakham would point something out to my dad and say, in Lao, that she wanted it, my dad would then tell me in English and ask me to ask about the price, I'd ask in Spanish, they'd tell me in Spanish, I'd tell my dad in English, he'd tell BK in Lao, and then they'd talk it over for a minute or two, he'd tell me in English whether or not they wanted it and then I'd convey their decision to the vendor. Overall, it usually took about 5 times longer than normal to make a purchase, but I think that just adds to the experience. Of course, I wouldn't want to be doing that for a long period of time, but for three weeks it's just comical to me. I've learned that having visitors is great, but they definitely need to be able to keep themselves entertained for some of the day since I work. Good thing my dad and Steve had an idea of things they wanted to do while I was at work...even if their poor Spanish got them to San Pedro in 5 hours instead of 2 and they occasionally got ripped off at the market. 

Tonight Steve's cooking for everyone at the house they're staying at and it'll be our last dinner together. Kind of sad, but I'm still really glad that they had the chance to come and that we had a great time. My dad's thinking of coming back sometime to take Spanish classes, so I'd say my work here is done. :)