Time with the Comodrona

Monday morning I headed to the Comodrona´s alone since Sara has left me for a week of fun traveling. While I was there, Ronnie and Tami showed up and he realized that she can just stay with me. I felt miserable because I had caught a nasty cold from the kids at the Guaderia (I guess... who knows where these things come from) and Ana felt bad for me. All the sudden, Ana came back from the other room saying there was an emergency birth that we needed to go to immediately. Tami and I entered the birthing suite and a woman was in active labor on the bed. The poor woman was obviously in a lot of pain and out of breath. Ana told me to grab both of her legs and pull back... she let both Tami and I feel how dialated the woman was and then we were all just trying to help her push. As soon as the baby came out, Ana ordered me out of the room since I was sick (totally makes sense... I don´t want the newborn getting my cold!). From what I saw, the baby was a girl but looked a little blue. Later I found out that the baby and the mother both had a cold. Ana therefore did not wash the baby again and only worked on getting the baby warm. A little later Ana came out with the mom and baby to put in the recovery room. The whole process is just so beautiful and Ana just knows her exactly what to do (it always seems). After the birth, another woman came in to be examined and I correctly found the head, hips, and figured out the age of the baby. Ana only said "I guess little by little you are learning something" and then laughed. Tami and I decided to leave and Ana wondered if I needed anything for my "gripe." I said Sure why not... and she went into her garden and picked me some leaves, then sent her son up another tree to get other leaves. She told me to take the calypso leaves, the leaves of the orange plant, and some cinnamon and boil it right before bed to make me better. OK sounds good to me.
That night after class I had my mother here make me the tea. She kept commenting that calypso leaves are really strong and this should totally help me. I drank the tea (and also took a double dose of Sudafed Cold Relief) and went to sleep. In the morning, I felt much better... the world will never know which worked haha.
Tuesday we tried to go to the museum again and it was closed, again. We shopped around, looking for presents and books... and just ended up coming back to the school to just hang out. I went home for lunch and packed my bag for the night because I had decided to spend the night at the Comodrona´s and see what her life was like at night. My host mother packed me a dinner to go (refried beans and cheese paste on a roll mmmmm) and I headed out. Because Buena Vista is two bus rides away, Amy and I decided to leave the school at 430, run some errands, and get the bus as soon as we could (because of the danger of traveling at night and the fact that busses can just stop running at anytime).
Amy and I got to the clinic around 630pm and Ana was still seeing patients. After a little while, she asked if we would like to have dinner with her family. She made us a soup and corn tortillas and kept insisting we try her tomatillos. I know from my family that I don´t like tomatillos but she was very insistent and made me taste it. They were SO GOOD!! Not salty and from papas like the other ones I´ve had, but sweet... mmmm. Her husband is hysterical and the two of them kept me laughing for hours. I found out that Ana has been the midwife here for 20 years and just figured out that she has delivered 11,000 babies in her time here. Already the babies she first delivered are having kids themselves!! She´s also only 38 years old... so amazing to already have done so much! After dinner I played games with a swivel chair and her 4 year old son, and the two girls (8 and 12) that Ana has taken in because they don´t have families. Ana has 5 kids of her own AND kids that she just takes in. Wow. Franklin, the 4 year old, is out of control but kept me laughing as well. By 9pm Amy and I were wondering when these kids would go to bed so we could watch some TV in English. I drew the line when they started watching Barney and turned on CNN haha. I cannot handle Barney in English, let alone Spanish. Anyway, Amy and I had to share a bed (a very rickety top bunk) and Ana said she would come get us when a woman came in. Sigh... no women came in the entire night. Ana was basically shocked. She hadn´t had a night with no births in an extremely long, long time. Just our luck.
In the morning, Ana saw some patients and I told her it was time for us to go. It was my last day there, sadly. She got really excited and told me that she wanted to do something first, I had my camera, right? I said, yep I have it... but why? She just had us follow her into her room and she started taking out the traditional Guatemaltecan women clothing. She then dressed me and Amy in the traditional clothing claiming "Now you are officially Guatemaltecan!" I told Ana that her clothing was a lot more difficult and more involved then our American clothing and she proclaimed that we would have to learn quickly how to dress if we wanted Guatemaltecan novios. She mentioned her son liked Americans... hahaha. We took pictures with Ana and she presented me with some traditional linen to have as a keepsake. We also exchanged addresses and numbers. I will hopefully be able to send her some medicines when I get back, but they use a bizarre package service here and I´ll have to find where in the States they are located. All in all, my experience with Ana was amazing and I feel so lucky to have been able to see how she practices medicine and learn from her.

Brian's Birthday in Guatemala

Saturday morning, Brian, Dave, Maggie, and I got up early and rented bikes at a nearby store. We had decided to head up the mountain to the hot springs in nearby Fuentes and thought that it wouldn´t be that hard to just guide ourselves. After finding our way out of Xela, we took a road that basically went straight up and then straight down a mountain. It was so steep heading down that we all had to walk our bikes... good times. My favorite part of going down into whatever city we were heading towards (we were extremely lost) was the kids yelling at me that it was very dangerous and I was going to die. Hahaha... oh kids. They were probably right though because of my brake situation... Anyway, after finding someone to give us directions we finally found our way to Zunil which is at the base of the climb to Fuentes. It was then a 8K climb straight up to the hot springs. I believe at one point I wanted to kill some people because I was so out of shape, but I made it thanks to Brian because he hung back and talked to me up the very last part of the mountain to the springs. The springs were pretty damn cool. The sulfur smell was strong, but that´s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. There was one wall that was really just hot to touch and the water by it was just awesome. We stayed in for awhile and then it began to rain. We imagined it was letting up and decided then would be a good time to start the descent. I mentioned that I had a ¨brake situation,¨ well what that means is that my back brakes didn`t work and all I had were my front brakes. This is very bad because if you pull the front brakes you´ll just flip right over your bike. So here I was, in the rain and fog, going down a mountain with no rear brakes. Maggie told me to just stick close to the wall and to keep my eye out for places I could jump off the bike to in case of an emergency. I know how to jump off horses, so that´s the same, right? Anyway, I think that was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. I probably would have felt better if they had at least provided helmets, but I guess that Guatemala doesn´t really believe in basic safety. Luckily we only encountered one chicken bus on the road which scared the crap out of me... but that´s OK because I survived. We got back to Xela with just enough time to get a cake for Brian´s birthday party and head over to the Chinese restaurant. They served a lot of food and were so cute about it being a birthday celebration because they played the longest rendition of ¨Happy Birthday¨over the loudspeakers when we had the cake out. Very cute. We headed over to Salun Tecun where it was unequivocally proven that I cannot chug if my life depended on it. Eight people going in sequence against me and I STILL LOST. Sigh oh well, I just must be missing that gene. After Salun, we headed over to an EntreMundo party which was quite hilarious. At first the music was awesome and we were all dancing up a storm... Toby even did the worm in the middle of the party in a puddle and proceeded to kick over the candles that were lighting the party haha. When the music turned bad, we all took turns trying to make the DJ play good music... at my turn he yelled at me to get out of us booth because I didn´t appreciate is ¨vision¨ Right... All in all we had a fabulous time and celebrated Brian´s birthday right in Guatemala.
Sunday we all met at Cafe Babylon for breakfast/lunch and tried to go to the Natural History museum (which is supposedly hilarious). Unfortunately it was closed, so we came back to school and just watched pointless American TV (CSI, Law and Order, E! countdown) for a couple hours that had Spanish subtitles (totally counts as studying). As my one and only weekend spent in Xela, it was definitely a good time.

I still love the Guaderia

Thursday morning I accompanied Brian and Dave to their clinic in the outskirts of Xela to see what they did and help out myself. The clinic is an American endeavor with rotating groups of helpers coming from the states and a couple of permanent workers (doctor, pharmacist, lab worker). At first there wasn't a lot for me to do so I shadowed Dr. Freddy with his patients for a little while. After a couple of patients, the nurses needed some help translating the triage area so I helped them as much as I possibly could. I realized I needed a little more medical Spanish to translate from English to Spanish, but going from Spanish to English did not cause as many problems. I was then able to work with the current volunteer doctor from Oregon who was only down for the week which was really nice because he had me more actively involved in figuring out the diagnosis and showing what he was looking for with each patient. When we had some down time, we made the mistake of looking at tap water under a microscope.... gross. There were things swimming in the water with big pinchers on the end. I can't even imagine what those bugs would do to my intestines. Really don't drink the water. After the best pizza ever for lunch (that might be withdrawal talking though), it was class as usual. The good bye fiesta for the Iowa people (most of my friends here) was that night. After dinner, we went salsa dancing with Megan and Patrick's host mom and family. I think the highlight of that was when Brian decided to climb up a pole and show everyone how he can stretch himself horizontal over the crowd... and then jumping on top of us all. It was sad to say goodbye to them all, but we had a good time while they were here and I myself will be heading home in one week anyway.
Friday morning I decided to go and help out at the Guaderia with the little kids again. I had bought one of the girls a birthday present the day before but hadn't been able to go to the actual birthday party on Thursday. I was really hoping she liked it and asked Amy, the head volunteer, if she knew. She didn't at the time, but the second we walked into the door to the Guaderia, one girl starts yelling at Amy "I got a doll for my birthday!" over and over again. The girl was Chavala and was the one I had gotten the gift for. It made me so happy she actually liked it! We split into groups and I read the Spanish versions of "Green Eggs and Ham " (instead of Sam I Am it's Juan Ramon hehe), "Hide and Seek", "Penguins", and "Lemon Moon" to the kids. I was also outside with them for a bit reading while they ran around me in circles to get their energy out. Those kids are just too cute.

THE BIRTH

After many trips to the midwife´s clinic and checking many pregnant and sick women, we finally had a birth while Sara and I were there. It was quite lucky for Sara because today was her last day. It started with a woman entering the clinic sobbing... she had had many problems and pain during the night and she was terrified she had lost her baby. Ana immediately slammed the door and locked it so that she could take a look. The poor woman... she was already fully dilated. Ana and I rushed the woman into the birthing room and Ana proceeded to break her water with her finger. She then massaged the stomach and basically pushed the baby most of the way out herself. By the time the mom was told to push, I could already see most of the head. The baby came out... and it was sooo tiny. Obviously premature. It was also a little blue, but it had a good set of lungs on it. Ana started asking questions to the woman and demanding to know why she hadn´t come during the night when Ana could have stalled the birth. The woman said she didn´t think it was that far along. While Sara was told to massage the woman´s chest for increased lactation, Ana continued massaging the stomach until finally the placenta came out as well. This whole process, from her showing up til end of the birth, took probably less than 20 minutes. Ana started dressing the baby in the clothes provided... she explained that she did not wash premature babies because they need all the warmth they can get. When we weighed the baby, we realized just how bad a shape this poor thing was. She was only 3 lbs 6 oz at 8 months gestation. Ana handed the baby off to Sara and me so that we could wrap the baby in as many layers as physically possible. Ana continued to take care of the mother and demonstrated to us how to make sure all of the placenta is out and it is safe to say the birth is over. 10 minutes after giving birth, the mother walked out of the birthing room to the recovery bed with me carrying the baby behind her. We got the mother situated and explained to her and her husband that the baby needed an incubator and they had to go to the hospital as soon as possible.

I think I´m going to try and stay at the midwife clinic for a night next week...

Tuesday...

In the morning, I studied with Brian and bought a present for one of the little girls at the Guaderia for her birthday (a little doll hehe). For part of my class, I went to an exhibition of Anne Frank... the reason this is going on in Guatemala is because they are using her story as a case story for the crimes that happened against the indigenous people of Guatemala during the war: the genocide, discrimination, and violence. Technically all of this ended in 1996, but the exhibition was trying to bring up that many of these problems are continuing today. After that uplifting experience, I had dance class... I love dance class but I wish we could learn more then the time allows. It´s so fun! Anyway, while Dave and I were walking home from La Parranda, we ran into a boy of 9 or 10 hopping down the street. We immediately asked if he was ok and in very rapid Spanish he responded that he had been hit by a car! The car had taken off and he needed an ambulance. Niether Dave nor I knew the number for the ambulance, but luckily someone had already called and it soon showed up. I was just happy that we understood what this kid was saying because if he had needed help we would have known what was going on.

Atitlan is supposed to be fun... right?

Friday was a nice end to the week because I had class in the morning and then spent the afternoon hanging out with Carolyn for her last day. She convinced me to buy some movies in spanish to enjoy when I get back to the States (including the Lion King hahaha). Friday night was the fiesta night where a student makes dinner for everyone. We had this awesome strawberry-raspberry cobbler (dessert first as always haha), pasta, fruit salad, and guacamole. Delicious... afterwards Dave, Carolyn, and I went out for one mojito as a good-bye party.
Saturday I woke up feeling uhh questionable. My host mother had already made me a decilious pile of pancakes, so I devoured them but couldn´t handle the thought of drinking coffee. I should have taken that as a sign to NOT go to Lake Atitlan again... but instead I jumped in the shower and ran off to catch the bus with the group. While walking to the bus, I could tell I was not feeling 100%. On the bus, I was sitting next to Dave and I must have looked as questionable as I felt, because he then tried to distract me with singing different Coldplay and Weezer songs. But to no avail. I asked Sara for her bag from Xelapan (bread store) and she found a holeless one for me. WARNING NOT FOR THE QUEASY Yes... I puked in the bus for a good hour... pancakes and all. The people behind me started asking Dave if we wanted some pills for me for motion sickness and he kindly declined. I thought it was all over, but no. When we got out to change busses at Los Cinquentros, I was puking in the middle of the street and the group scattered to try and find more bags for me. The vendors all around me were just staring at me, trying to figure out why I was in the middle of the street throwing up. When the group all returned (with black, not clear, bags), I couldn´t figure out what to do with the bag I currently had and the bag´s integrity was beginning to be questioned. No one around me answered when I asked for the basura, soooo after much debating, I left it behind one of the tiendas and ran... I felt kinda guilty, but not enough to take it with me. The sickness continued on the following two busses and then we finally arrived in Panajachel. The group was hungry, so we got lunch as I drank water... and soon discovered the water wouldn´t stay down either. Good times. After walking around a bit, we decided to head to Santiago... I felt great on the water with the wind and fresh breezes, but then we arrived and all I wanted to do was lay down forever. Which is exactly what I did for three hours while the rest of the group checked out Santiago (apparently I didn´t miss anything great). I felt better around 7pm or so and was able to eat some chicken noodle soup and grilled cheese. We then walked around the completely dead town... or so we thought until we stumbled upon a carnival in the middle of the town. Complete with a ferris wheel!! Although, the ferris wheel wasn´t really hooked up to anything so guys were pulling the wheel in a circle for the kids. I swear, we were the side show to the carnival. Greg is a very tall white guy with blonde hair, so is easily seen among these short dark haired Guatemaletecos. A kid on the ferris wheel kept his laser pointer concentrated on us the whole time we walked around the carnival so that everyone always knew exactly where we were. I felt completely out of place there but it was interesting nonetheless. We decided to just head back to the room and one of my favorite disney movies, the Sword in the Stone, was playing on Disney (in Spanish). The hilarious part was that Dave and I had been discussing that movie and the animated Robin Hood earlier that day (songs, plot, and all, as a distraction haha) so we were both pretty psyched.
Sunday I woke up feeling more myself, maybe not 100%, but better. I turned on the TV and the animated Robin Hood was on!! What are the odds? Haha we all watched Robin Hood and got going for the day once it was over. Dave was definitely not feeling 100% and people were not happy with Santiago, so we caught an early boat to Panajachel. We took a hotel right on the water and then ate some breakfast. After getting situated and finding the rest of the people from Xela, Sara, Jay, and I decided to check out what was east of Pana... which is basically the sewer system for Pana. Excellent. After walking through/over that, we found a Guatemalteco beach where we were the only white people. Some little girls came over to have us swim with them, but after seeing the sewage coming in 20 feet away, we decided against it. After watching the sunset with the group on the roof over the lake, we headed out to dinner... mmm 3 for 10Q tacos (can you hear my intense sarcasm??) I decided only to have one very very weak drink which turned out to be an awesome idea. Dave went home without eating, while the 5 of us decided to make friends with the owner of the taco stand by giving him some of our alcohol. After 3 of the people finished off the alcohol, we decided to find a disco... which doesn't really exist on Sunday nights of course. Kristen wasn´t feeling well, so she headed home to join Dave. The rest of us ended up wandering around Pana and different bars trying to find the gringos. I encountered a group of Guatemaltecos trying to talk to a group of Americans and it just not working out. After interpreting for them for like 10 minutes and fixing their communication problem, I split. I took the thoroughly wasted people home around midnight to their room and returned to mine with Kristen and Dave. Ooooh man. Dave was feeling better, just hungry, but poor Kristen was really, really sick. Dave and I stayed up with her all night as she was violently ill in the bathroom. All I could do was hold a cold compress to her neck and let her use me as a pillow when resting. Around 2am, she was starting to get worse with her breathing so I found the manager and Dave and I tried to figure out if their was a hospital or doctor nearby. Unforunately, only a public hospital existed an hour away and we didn´t want to take our chances with that (public hospitals suck and the odds of an actual doctor being their during the night is slim to none). So all we could do was wait it out.
Around 830 we decided to try and get some breakfast and head back to Xela. I took a shower there... and I can honestly say it was the best shower ever. Hot water at high pressure... omg I hadn´t had a shower like that in four weeks. Totally worth the 60Q to stay there. Anyway, back to the sicklies... Sara was sick that morning from a really bad hangover. She couldn´t eat breakfast and ended up puking all the way home on the busses. I had an interesting conversation with a man from Solola who wanted either 200Q or for me to give him my blood at a hospital. I politely declined. We had many troubles on the bus rides home... we got split up in Los Cinquentros and most of us got on a coach bus. We were stopped by the police and everyone needed to take out their passports. Some people were taken off the bus. First those without passports (who were not American thankfully since Dave didn´t have his) and then indigenous people who looked, I don´t know, like they needed to be taken off?? They were questioned for like 20 or 30 minutes and then allowed to return. I asked one of those questioned what was going on and he just said the police can do what they want. That bus was supposed to take us to Xela, but it didn't. It ended up taking us 6 busses and a taxi to get from Pana to Xela which should only take 2 to 3 max. Poor Sara was sick the entire time.
On a happier note, I have a new teacher who is just awesome. She really makes me work hard. I think these last two weeks are going to be awesome and I´ll really learn a lot =)

La Guaderia!!

Wednesday night was supposed to be dance class (I´m learning salsa and meringue... Dave and I can really ´cut a rug´now haha... OK I got some comments on me using that phrase but it is totally not an old people´s saying and I´m sticking to it). So Dave, Carolyn and I went to Salon Tecun to meet up with Abby and Brian for some drinks and dinner (for them). OK so the service at Tecun is not the best in the world... you might actually call it the worst after this. Abby and Brian ordered hamburgers and nachos (as an appetizer). It took one hour for the ´nachos´ to show up and they were just chips with a bowl of salsa and cheese on the side. Another hour later, they still hadn´t received their burgers and started asking the waitress about it. She finally brought out a weird looking sandwich (like roast beef or ham or something) and tried to walk away quickly but, of course, she was stopped. She claimed that if they didn´t eat this wrong order, it would take another hour or so to get their actual correct order... which is just ridiculous. Abby and Brian ended up going to McDonald´s where surprisingly the service is ridiculously amazing. They are soo attentive and wanting to please, it´s hysterical.
Thursday I had class in the morning and in the afternoon, I went to the guarderia which is a nursery/after school program in a neighboring town. I LOVE THE GUADERIA. I walked in the door and immediately one of the kids (maybe 4 or 5 years old) ran up and wanted me to pick her up. I picked her up and threw her in the air... which she absolutely loved. I finally was able to put her down after lots of prompting and I sat down at a table to help kids with math. Another little girl immediately crawled into my lap and all the kids are just yelling ´como te llamas?´ the entire time. I realized that my spanish is probably more at the level of the 2 and 3 year olds, so I moved to the floor with all the blocks and little kids. The kids just could not get enough of crawling all over me and playing games with me... honestly, this is my idea of the absolute best way to spend an afternoon. After all that fun at the guaderia, Dave, Brian, Abby, Maggie, and I went to a restaurant to meet one of my new students in my orientation group (totally random, right? I emailed my group and one just happened to be studying spanish in Xela!!). It turns out that Brian already knew him because he went to Williams... such a small world.

Clinic and Xia´ba

So Monday morning Sara and I met up early to head over to the clinic. We were not happy to find that the midwife was not up yet and she didn´t show up until 10am (way after we had gotten there). One of the interesting cases was a woman with a vague pain around her belly... during the examination we discovered she had an inguinal hernia. She did not have the money or the motives to go to a hospital so Ana gave her some plants to help. We still have not seen a birth and Lisa and I are considering staying at the clinic one night to help out... we´ll see if that happens. Monday afternoon my usual teacher was gone so I got a new one who is just awesome. I now want to switch teachers. I feel bad about hurting my current teacher´s feelings, but I am not learning anything more with him and this guy makes me work hard. I won´t know if this can happen until next Monday, but I hope it does.
Tuesday, Sara convinced me to get up early and study... and I felt really good about it too. My teacher gave me The Alchemist in Spanish in the afternoon and I spent a large portion of the night before going out reading it. It wasn´t that hard for me! (It´s also a super easy book according to most people, but I´m still proud). That night a bunch of us went to Gargolas and the funniest part of the night was trying to get Carolyn to dance with a Guatelatecan who´s friends all wanted him to dance with her... It involved me and the friend signalling to each other hahaha... they salsaed for one song before all of us were ready to go home for the night.
This morning, instead of going to the midwife clinic, we went to Xia´ba to work. Xia´ba is a community that used to be in a different area but was destroyed by Hurricane Stan and moved to its current place. (I went here my second day in Xela.) Dr. Christian runs a clinic out of a small storage room with chairs pushed together for the examining table. The patients are all woman and children with lots of pain and infections. The children are soo cute. However, after the clinic I was talking to the teacher I had on Monday about it and he gave me the other view of all these women and children. He said that many of the women in the community will just say they have pain and problems so that they can get the free medicine offered by us. It's actually a really common problem in all of Guatemala. Well, I guess this way they can have it when they need it?

4th of July and Antigua

So I'm a little behind in writing, so this might be a long one... The fourth of July was hilarious in Xela. A gringo holiday where only gringos are out celebrating. We ended up hanging out on the roof of the school for a long time before heading out to join other schools at a bar. The hilarious part was that when we got to the door, the place was closed so we knocked. The guy answered that the place was closed but we told him our friends were in there and they just let us in! We stayed pretty late before taking cab rides home. (I actually crowd surfed! Well, it was all my friends and I was the 4th person to do it, so it's not really crowd surfing as it is being held up by all your friends... in Guatemala haha.) The clinic on Wednesday was mostly routine patients with ovarian infections and new pregnancies. Wednesday night was Jon and Alex's going away party at their place... very chill. Thursday night was another chill night of wine to celebrate Krista's birthday.
Friday, I moved my class to the morning so that I could take off early for Antigua. 13 of us headed there for the weekend. We got their around 3pm and immediately started off to look at some cathedrals and ruins. Unfortunately it started pouring bfore we could see a lot of the city that day. We called it a very early night (930!) because of our early wakeup call in the morning. At 6am, 12 of us were picked up to go climb PACAYA! Pacaya is an active volcano about 1.5 hours from Antigua. The hike up the volcano wasn't too terrible... just the first 20 minutes was straight off and then it pretty much was a stroll through the jungle. When we finally reached the top, we could see the summit smoking above us. Below us was lava.... running lava, orange and red and black. We climbed down and was actually standing on the lava!! My pants had been rolled up for the hike and when I stepped onto the lava, my calves starting burning! I jumped off and looked down and my skin looked like it had been sunburnt, but really it had been cooking under the heat of the lava! SOOO HOT. I rolled down my pants and jumped back on to snap some pictures and really examine the lava. The cool thing was that you could hear it moving and see the waves of hot molten lava go by you. Sometimes the lava ran over some grass and would start a small fire. I didn't last too long on the lava before I decided I was hot enough and needed to go back up to the top. At the top, you could get on the lava in another area where the molten hot lava wasn't as close to you and you could stand on it for a long time. As we climbed higher, we found out that we could technically see El Salvador from where we were. Some people started up to the summit but then a guard wouldn't let them pass telling them the smoke coming out of the top was actually noxious fumes that would kill us. After many pictures, we headed back down for the bus ride home.
We got back to Antigua in time to see the 3rd place game of Germany vs Portugal. I was upset that my favorite player (the goalie for Germany, Lehman) wasn't in but I was very happy with the ending. After the game, we saw more churches and walked around more of Antigua visiting jewelery shops and what not. Jake and Ryan then called saying they were back and we were able to meet up with them and chat for a bit. ´Dave, Maggie, and I met up with Jake, Aileen, Luke, and Ryan for dinner, but there were so many of us that we were unable to eat together! It sucked, but at least we got to all catch up for a bit. After we got dinner, we met up with all the Xela kids at Gaia but then moved the group to Brian´s girlfriend´s friend´s boyfriend´s bar in Antigua (confusing yes but since Abby was there it all makes sense).
Sunday dawned much, much earlier than we would have liked because at 8am a girl started singing karaoke next door trying to entice people to come eat at their restaurant. Everyone but Dave, Maggie, and I left for home or ChiChi so the three of us visited some awesome ruins for the morning (that earthquake of 1773 really sucked... I have pics to demonstrate}. We then went to the Children´s hospital which is an interesting experience because it has a glassed in courtyard where all the abandoned children with disabilities are and people walk around staring at them. I felt like they were being treated like animals at a zoo (complete with a sign that says ´do no feed the children´). After getting trapped in the ajoining church, we escaped to shop for more jade. We went to a jade store that had a workshop and museum as a part of the store. They gave us a really cool tour of the place, so OF COURSE, we had to buy something. Dave convinced both Maggie and I into buying necklaces for ourselves... I think it was a good deal =P. We headed over to Reds to meet up with the Antigua Columbian kids to watch the World Cup final. Sigh... Zidane made me really upset with his actions and I was also upset that the game was won with penalty kicks. Oh well.
The bus rides back were uhh an experience. On the first bus, the three of us were crammed into one seat and then Dave would get pushed and I would go behind Maggie as she leaned forward in her seat next to the window. The second bus was absolutely packed and we got on late. We were ´standíng´in the aisles for awhile... and by standing I mean my legs were wedged between sleeping people while the top of my body was being flailed about by the crazy driving. We finally got seats together for the last two most harrowing hours. The driver was freaking crazy. There are many dangerous curves going up and down the mountain to get in and out of the valleys. On one side of the road is a cliff and the other is a sheer dropoff. The driver was taking these turns at a million miles per hour. A couple of time we actually went up onto two wheels... Dave decided to remind me then of the movie Speed when they have to take a sharp turn at a high speed and everyone sits on one side of the bus to keep it from flipping... thanks for that image Dave. I think Maggie had a couple of heart attacks during the ride, but we made it. After dropping Maggie off at her house, Dave and I were walking and some punks drove by in a car and threw an egg at us... and missed. It was funny because they missed... we would not have been laughing if they had hit us, but they didn't so it's all good.

La Clinica

I haven't mentioned anything about medicine or speaking spanish here yet. Last week I was going to cultural competency conferences where I learned all about Mayan culture and history. I was the only one at the conferences so it was really a private history lesson where I could ask anything I wanted and could have him explain anything I didn't understand. Thursdays there is a medical conference that all the medical students from Pop-Wuj are supposed to attend. This week a midwife came to explain the herbs used to help women cope with everything from morning sickness to hemorraging problems. If you want a hilarious story about that, ask me about volunteering... but I'm not writing about it.
My first day with the midwife was yesterday. Ronnie, the guy in charge of the medical program, drove me there and then explained how to take the busses back to Xela when I was done. The midwife is a very cute older lady who I could just see put everyone at ease with just one word. I got to try to find the head of the baby on each woman that came in and then watched with awe as she just would flip the baby around by just massaging the woman's stomach. I also got to feel what a 8 week pregnancy feels like as she informed the woman that she was expecting. A baby had been born at 2am so I watched as she used a match to burn the end of the umbilical cord and then held the baby as she explained to the dad why I was there. Everyone at the clinic was incredibly nice to me and would ask all about Xela, the US, and how hard it was to learn spanish or english. Many of the women only spoke the Mayan language Mum. I found it hilarious, for some reason, that the woman would speak Mum to Ana and then she would speak spanish to me and then I would translate it to english in my head. I saw some other really fascinating cases and I hope to see and learn more tomorrow.
I was supposed to catch a minibus to San Juan and change busses for Xela there. However, I was extremely lucky and found a direct bus from Ana's door to Xela. I jumped on the bus and sat down to a woman holding a one year old and had a nine year old asleep at her side. I started talking to her and she turned out to be the sweetest woman. She told me all about her kids and asked me many questions about what I was doing in Buena Vista and Xela. She loved my story and I think she felt slightly protective of me since I was traveling alone that day. We exchanged numbers and she was adament that if I ever needed any help or found myself in San Marcus I was to call her. Such wonderful and nice people here.

Lake Atitlan

On Friday afternoon, I left for Lake Atitlan with 4 people I met here at Pop-Wuj. As we descended into the lake region, I was captivated by just how beautiful the area really was. The lake is at around a one mile altitude and surrounded by three volcanoes (Atitlan, San Pedro, and Toliman). The lake itself is 300 meters deep, but people are beginning to think it could be up to 600 meters deep. The lake is surrounded by a couple of towns. Only Pan is reachable by road while all the others require a boat. Anyway... it was just picturesque. We got to Pan around 7pm and immediately tried to scout out a perfect hotel for the night. We ended up finding this great deal (60Qs each!) on a hotel that was right on the water. Our rooms were on the third floor so that we could see the fantastic views from our rooms. After a dinner directly on the water, the five of us piled into a three wheeled cab to the other side of the city so that we could just walk back to our rooms and enjoy the sights. We listened to some live music and watched as the skankily clad Marlboro girls went around convincing people to smoke and enter a contest (I have never seen anything like that except with beer the night before... skankily clad Gallo girls were giving prizes to people caught drinking Gallo... hmm a theme here?) Anyway, when we got back to the hotel, we all decided to watch for shooting stars on the roof of the hotel. Shalini, Alex, and I ended up staying up late discussing the meaning of life and God... very cliche but it seemed to fit with the atmosphere.
On Saturday, the boys got up super early to watch the sunrise and then woke Shalini and I up at 745am to get the day started. We found a nice place to have breakfast and then rented kayaks. We got them from an hour to explore the shore around us. The whole experience on the lake was breath taking. We found a cliff to dive off of and parked our kayaks at some random house before going to the cliffs to play around in the water. We barely made it back in time and then we had to check-out. With all of our stuff, we toured the market and found a bar to watch France beat Brazil! We were the obnoxious France fans surrounded by Brazil fans.
We caught a boat to Santa Cruz where we had heard of a hostel that had crossdressing parties on Saturday nights. The Inguana Perdita was this awesomely chill place where the rooms were for eight people with no walls, only a ceiling (24Qs a night... that's barely $3) and a serve yourself on the honor code bar. Usually the place is packed, but that night only us and 3 other guests were there for the party. The boys went all out in dresses and it was hysterical. The night was very chill with us just listening to music and basically having fun seeing girls in boxers with beards and guys trying to figure out how to sit in a dress (which, the couldn't).
On Sunday, Jon, Alex, and I went for a hike towards a nearby village. We could see these awesome cliffs from the hostel and wanted to check them out. The path swung up the mountain before we got to the cliffs so we just jumped in and swam the rest of the way. I love cliffdiving and these rocks were at a point so you didn't see the land around you, only the volcanoes and water in front of you... beautiful. We tried to follow the stairs near the cliff up, but they just got too steep and we turned back. After swimming and hiking back, we lazed around for a bit before heading back to Pan to head home. We finally got on the first chicken bus at 4:15. It took FIVE busses to get back to Xela, which was highly annoying, making our arrival around 8pm. However, I successfully had my first phone convo in Spanish with my host family (phones are hard!) which made me happy. It's always the little things that make me happy =)