Aqua Magic y la Vida Tranquila

Adventures

The last couple of weeks have been fairly calm, that is to say, there haven't been any overnight trips and work at Safe Passage has gotten to be fairly routine. That said, I have had a few adventures. The major happening is that I went to Aqua Magic-- a beachfront waterpark a couple hours away in Puerto San Jose. Actually, I went on back-to-back Saturdays, because it so happened that my classes happened to be scheduled one weekend after the other. Classes go on this kind of field trip at the end of a week when they have been working with a support team (a group of volunteers who come just for a week), together with the volunteers as a reward for the kids and the culmination of the experience for the volunteers. Actually, there's a blogpost on the Safe Passage site describing the day's itinerary, so I'm not going to go into too much specific detail, but the day's a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun going down the slides with and teaching pool games to my kids. My younger class had gotten to take swimming lessons because of a United Way grant, but the older class missed out and I spent a lot of time trying to teach some basic buoyancy. The real highlight though was braving the waves-- most of my students had never seen the ocean before, and most of them were terrified of being swept out by the current, so as we went out to jump waves, my hands were squeezed white several times and all the kids alternated between screaming and laughing manically. I didn't bring my camera the first time (with the 8th graders) but I got some pictures the second time around (with the 5th graders):

My other excursion in the last couple of weeks was a 2 hour hike up to Earth Lodge--an ex-pat hostel/avocado farm in the mountains above Antigua. My friend and I walked up, chilled on the hammocks/couches for a while, breathed deeply, and a delicious nutritious lunch. In addition to the views from the top, it happened to be Corpus Christi in a couple of the villages we walked past, so we saw these beautiful paths of saw-dust designs leading to altars. When we were walking there, they were all still being put together, and by the time we left, they were all abandoned and messed up. Apparently, they are just used for a brief procession (we caught a brief glimpse of one). While sawdust designs and parades are all good and nice, the celebrations can get a bit annoying because they involve fairly constant firecrackers, which really don't sound any quieter even after hearing 30 in the course of 5 minutes.

I got a bigger taste of religious celebration right here in Antigua. Monday was Saint James's Day, and Santiago is the patron saint of Antigua, so there were quite the festivities. Unfortunately, I was at work and missed the bulk of the festivities, but what I caught was still quite cool. There were several parades through the course of the day, and we caught the very end--a high school drum and bugle corps proceeding a float bearing the cathedral's statue of Santiago, escorting the float into the cathedral. The night before, I saw a marimba ensemble, which consisted of 46 marimba players, 4 bassists, and 3 drummers all playing together. That night I joined a huge crowd in the park and watched Casa Blanca, a popular band that had several tremendous musicians. Most of their songs were jazz and salsa, but they closed out with two interesting choices-- "El Amor" by Tito El Bambino which is a popular ballad by a reggaeton artist, and then "I Got You (I Feel Good)" by James Brown. The former was nice, the latter was bizarre, due to the singer's... interesting variations in melody and pronunciation, but the song was saved by an amazing five minute drum solo.

I had one other adventure, which wasn't really an excursion. On the way back from Safe Passage, I got off the volunteer bus in front of a mall with the intention of going in, buying a ticket for the upcoming Wisin & Yandell show (they're a very good and extremely popular reggaeton group), and then catching a bus back to Antigua. However, due to construction and uninformed security guards, I ended up making my way back and forth and back again among three of Guatemala's major malls, trying to find the correct kiosk. Fortunately, the return journey was still and adventure but went a lot smoother-- I had no problem taking my first chicken bus all by myself (chicken buses are old school buses which are given crazy paint jobs and are filled up with guatemalans three to a seat, which really means two and a half people in each seat, with the people sitting on the aisle sides hanging out into the aisle and meeting up in the middle so that its 6 people wedged together all the way across).

Safe Passage

I now only have a week and a half left working at Safe Passage, and yet up until a week ago, I was somehow still convinced that my time here could still be responsibly rounded to a month (to be fair, I hadn't yet fully decided that my last week would be spent visiting Lake Atitlan, and 3 1/2 weeks is somewhat close to a month). Fortunately though, I haven't been stressing my departure so much, even as a lot of the volunteers who arrived with me have left in the last couple of weeks. As always, working with the kids has been a lot of progress, interspersed with periodic frustration. On the one hand, I feel like I'm getting closer to having real personal relationships with a lot of the kids (especially after going to the waterpark with them) and I also do feel like I'm getting some big academic concepts across, especially in math. On the other hand, as the whole things becomes more routine, I've noticed that the thrill of seeing a kid understand something new has dulled a little bit, and since my surroundings are no longer as new and exciting, my occasional bouts of boredom when there's not really anything to do have become even more boring. I'm pretty sure I'm already over-dissecting my experience, and that this isn't that interesting either, so I'm just going to share a couple of anecdotes/happenings:

• A couple of volunteers who were part of a medical support team (they provide one week of free open clinic for the community) decided they wanted to do an art project. As a result, instead of normal value-centered art class, my 5th graders made origami frogs and crowns. The challenge was then to make the frog jump into the crown. However, my kids' skill and enthusiasm brought the activity to a new level-- by the end of the class, many crowns were intricately colored, others had all kinds of origami embellishments, and a couple of boys had managed to jump their frogs into a stack of 6 crowns-- at least a couple of feet high.
• My 8th grade English class recently started a new project that involves inventing a futuristic product and making a pamphlet to advertise it. The idea is that it gets them to make complete sentences and to expand their vocabulary, especially with adjectives. Because Guatemalan schools do even more to stifle creativity than American ones, a lot of the kids seemed very lost at first when they were given the assignment to invent something, but the creative juices got flowing eventually to a certain degree. One group of boys just wanted to sell water, but market it with all kinds of silly English phrases they'd picked up from Reggaeton. They eventually decided to make it a bottomless bottle of water, after we made them realize what they had wasn't really an invention, much less futuristic.
• One group of three 5th grade boys who go to the same school had tests coming up, so I took them outside to help them study. The first thing we worked on was memorizing the names of the Chiefs and Conquistadores of Central America. I tried to help the kids come up with pneumonic devices, but it's a lot harder to do in not-my-native-language. The ones I came up with weren't great and were quite silly, but I think the boys all had the names down by the end, so I guess I got the job done.

Upcoming Events:

-Wisin y Yandel Concert (preceded by a minitour of Guatemala city)

-Scuba diving at Lake Atitlan

-Saying goodbye to everyone

-Coming home