I'm baaaccccckkkk!!!! (for now)

So in case you cant count or the title doesnt make it obvious, I'm back! I can lay in my own bed, I can play on the internet faster, AND drink shower water(without needing to spend the next 3 days near a toilet.)

The last 9(ish) days of my trip I got to spend with my youth group and my wonderful mother(she pays me extra for that.) We played around in Chichicastenango and then worked in Camanchaj building a septic tank for the clinic (insert poop joke here.) We also managed to get a lot of little things done around the clinic, such as painting, cleaning, organizing, etc. Basically, all of the stuff that Jay and everyone else at the clinic wanted to do, but never had the manpower or time to. I think between the 2 main projects we got a lot done. We layed a BUNCH of cinderblocks in a 7 foot deep hole and just about had it ready to get the water sanitization mumbo jumbo magic tank installed and (almost) in operation.

I really had a blast for the past 7 weeks and I really would like to thank everyone who sponsored me on this trip in any way shape, form, or fashion! You are all the coolest and I hope I get to go again soon. I'm really sad that I had to leave Guatemala because it is such a beautiful country with great weather, but I am really happy to be home.

I hope you all still keep up with the blog because I imagine I will still try and keep it updated from time to time.

Now its off to Kentucky for 10 days to go rock climbing with some of the coolest people I know!

Thanks,

Parker

Tomorrow

I will probably drop out of the blogosphere for a few days as I will be working with my youth group putting cinder blocks in a really big hole for a septic tank. SO since I dont know what the net situation is for our hotel, I´m gonna assume the worst and say that there wont be any. However, I might still be able to post something, and will definitely post stuff once I get back and maybe while I´m in Kentucky, so dont stop following. Ever.

:)

I'll admit

Ive kind of been failing on updating on this blog thingy, but honestly not a whole lot thats been going on has been just amazing or interesting, so I dont think I'm really leaving much out. As you can guess, I DIDNT go scuba diving=[ things were just getting really complicated with it, so I figured I would just chill instead and just come back next year=]

The group last week was probably not the best mix of adults possible, but it was still nice to get out and do some translating. On a good note, my youth group and my mommy come in on friday which im suuuupppperrrrr ready for. It will be nice to see some familiar faces again, although chilling with all my new friends has been fun too.=]

tal vez otro dia

posting to say

im still not posting this week. im on a computer in an internet cafe and i hate typing on this keyboard. looks good for scuba diving, but we shall still see....

Gone for the week.

The past couple of days have been pretty nice. On Wednesday afternoon I hooked up with a group from Kentucky and started working with them. They were all extremely cool and I had a lot of fun doing something invovling a little more physical labor than translating. Basically what went on for me was on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons I helped them out with a soccer clinic and then a small VBS thing afterwards (lure them with soccer then tell them about God, I thought it was pretty smart.) Then in the mornings we went to various places and did construction work. I thought that this really helped establish good relationships with Solomon’s Porch and the people who work there. I also organized the small fireworks show for the 4^th of July, it wasn’t much but it was a lot of fun to shoot fireworks out by the lake.

While working with them, I also got an offer to go translate for a medical team over in San Juan just across the lake from Pana, so that is where Im about to be headed later on today. I’m bringing the camera and computer, but don’t know if I will have a chance to update, so if I don’t post until next weekend or so, that’s why.

More later

Parker

Entirely too tired

to put lots of detail into this post.

Worked with a group today from Somerset, KY slinging cement and bricks the Guatemalan way for the morning and doing soccer stuff/VBS with kids in a semi remote village in the afternoon. Needless to say, I am tired. Dont have plans for the weekend yet, but it is shaping up like i may be translating for a medical group not with Salud y Paz in San Juan next week, but we shall see. I think today was a really good day, I made some good connections with the people at Soloman's Porch, and I really felt like I helped out with the group from Kentucky. Will see how it goes tomorrow and I might post more in detail if I am a little more awake.

asdfasdfasdf

You have no idea

how good empanadas are here! Deliciousness to the max.

anyway, not a whole lot of excitingness going on today, and what little there was I'll share combined with tomorrow.

However, last night I did try out washing my cloths in the sink, just to see if I could, and it turns out I can!(mostly) It really went pretty well with shirts and such, but the jeans were a completely different story. they were a pain to wash, a pain to get all the soap out of, and then a pain to dry, they still feel almost completely wet 24 hours later. That being said, it really is hard to dry anything in such a humid, rainy climate. But, on the upside, its still wayyyy cheaper to do than taking it to the laundry lady to do it. and the really cool part, the soap you use is like a clean everything soap, so you can do your laundry and your dishes with the same stuff, its pretty cool.

Más Mañana

Dia Del Ejercito

Thats code for Guatemalan bank holiday, nothings open.

I managed to get to sleep last night, around 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning. Got out of bed around 9:30.

Things I did today:

-Read 50 pages of a book in spanish for my extended essay

-Ate really good pizza

-Got call while eating the really good pizza that I needed to pay rent on my apartment

-Walked all over the city looking for an ATM that was open and that accepted credit cards(hint: there is no such thing, D'OH!)

-Read another 50 pages of the book in spanish

-Got rained on

-Played on the internet until a group of 20ish people crashed my quiet spot with WiFi

-Went to the local grocery store, Chalo's, I have decided that the spawn of walmart is really evil and should not be supported

-Did NOT find Lucky Charms in the grocery store, obviously they dont know how magically delicious they really are

-Bought soap and off-brand cinnamon toast crunch instead

-Ate dinner, wasnt quite as good as the lunch

-Realized I still had a half a glass of limonada con soda sitting next to me as I write this post

-Posted this post

When Good Siestas Go Bad...

So today was really just another normal day, I woke up and went to clinic, feeling kind of tired all day. It was not the best feeling, but I had an alright time. Filled in at the pharmacy again, helping out Maria and Jose, the usual kind of stuff. I headed back to the apartment, still tired, and it was kind of rainy so I really didn’t feel like staying out to keep myself awake, that basically left me with one good option, a nap. I took the nap and it was really nice, so nice that I turned off my alarm I had set for myself and slept for 3 hours… I woke up thinking that I had slept until the next day and I had to get up to go to the clinic. It was really 6:33 at night. I figured at that point that I should get up and get something to eat since restaurants close up kind of early around here. I grabbed some empanadas, deep fried flour tortillas wrapped around a warm center of beef, pretty delish. That’s about it.

Now I’ll probably head back across the street and do all the reading I was planning on doing this afternoon right now. That or watch a movie…or two…or three…I doubt I’ll be sleeping anytime soon. Tomorrow’s Guatemala’s day celebrating the military, so I imagine there will be something going on here in Pana, no work at the clinic. I figure it might be a nice day to stay in and do some more on summer reading/extended essay stuff.

Hasta Luego,

Parker

Xela: the novel

So yeah not sure how long this post is going to go, mainly depends on 3 factors, computer battery, wordyness, and attention span.

Anyway, this weekend was probably the best I’ve had here in Guatemala thus far. Thursday night I was walking (I do a lot of that there) to pick up my laundry when I ran into Rachel, who I keep running into at various things and we started to talk. As it turns out she was also headed to Xela (pronounced SHAY-LUH for those of yall still trying to figure out what sound x and e make together.) I hadn’t really made any plans because most everything I found seemed a little bit on the steep side but I didn’t want to take a camioneta a.k.a. chicken bus by myself because it gets confusing sometimes. We talked about what we were doing, and then she invited me to come with her and one of her friends from the Peace Corps who has been in Guatemala for just under 2 years.

Friday

I met up with Rachel and we headed to Solola to meet up with Christine, Rachel’s peace corps friend. As it turns out we had to take four different buses to get to Xela, pana to solola, solola to los encuentros, los encuentros to cuatro caminos, and then cuatro caminos to Quetzaltenango (xela). For those of you who don’t know, the camionetas are sort of like overdecorated, undersized, overpacked school buses. Some of them aren’t even overdecorated, still sporting their original school district’s location and bus number (and painted the same obnoxious yellow.) Others have all sorts of decals and ornaments painted in all parts of them. But no matter how cool or uncool they look, riding them is the real adventure. The 3^rd bus was really interesting because it was kind of packed when we first got in, so much so that we had to hop though the back door as the driver was kind of sort of pulling away, I then ended up standing for 30 minutes or so with one leg jammed between a large sack of carrots and the other in between an indigenous woman’s leg and a seat, while holding on to the bars above me to keep from losing balance. It was kind of nuts. It got better whenever we hit a popular stop and a bunch of people got off, or at least enough for us to score parts of seats. Where I was there was not a fully open seat, but two 6 inch spaces on each side of the aisle on which I could fit onto both of and have a pretty comfy little space to sit.

Fast forward a few hours

As soon as we got to Xela, it started raining for a good couple of hours. Luckily, we got out of it by dropping our stuff at the hostel and jumping a microbus (kind of like your mom’s minivan, only with a few more seats and more head room) and went to one of the best chinese places I’ve been anywhere, and I got truly full for the first time in 3 weeks, not the kind of full where youre just content, but the kind of full where you cannot eat anymore. The girls have a few errands to run so we head over to the mall there. It was a real mall, only about half the size of most. They run their errands and then we decided to see a movie. Unfortunately Rachel didn’t know spanish so we kind of had to go see some chick flick about ghosts and ex girlfriends. Would have been really boring, but about a third of the way through, the power died due to the storm going on outside. Everywhere else in the mall had power except for the movie theater. They gave us a rain stamp that said we could come back and see it anytime, but we werent going to be in Xela for long so we waited it out…for three hours. It ended up that the movie kind of sucked, but it was really cool talking with Christine about what she does with the peace corps and all of the really cool stuff she’s done here in Guatemala.

Fast forward to 11:00 PM ish

I watched people in what was supposed to be Salsa night do nothing but dance to Reggaton(think rap in spanish with a little more latin feel, same sort of dancing) that was really interesting. Really hot and really loud. A little bit of salsa came on and so Christine danced some and then we headed back, it was kind of late.

Saturday

Wow this is a long post….

Woke up Saturday and had breakfast on the parque central in Xela right before I met up with Julia, a girl who translated for the second HoH group and was cool enough to want to give me a tour of Xela. We did a lot of walking and talking, all in spanish, I was tired by the end of the day. We checked out a couple of art exhibits and wanted to see some other stuff too, but it seemed like everywhere we went everything was closed =/. We hooked up with her nephew, Paulo, who is a few years younger than me and walked around some more. Finally we found where the local graffiti artists were doing some stuff around a tattoo parlor. That was really cool to watch the process of everything get painted and such.

Fast forward a little more…

So one of my entire purposes for going to Xela was to see transformers, and we did. It was in Spanish so I had to work to keep up. I thought it was pretty good, but it didn’t quite keep up with the first one, but I guess that’s what you get with sequels. The good thing is that movies here are even cheaper than back in the States, like $3 for the nighttime shows, $2 for the matinees. Tried out the Pollo Campero, (read: Fried chicken fast food style) and it was delish. Almost gave Chicken Express a run for its money. Headed back to the hostel and chilled for the rest of the night.

Today

Kind of slept in to make up for the lack of sleep Friday night. Paid for my room, which only cost like $8 for the two nights and left, I was pretty psyched about that. I then spent like 30 minutes waiting for a green bus to come, I finally got fed up and walked to a park where supposedly there were microbuses that went to the bus terminal every 5 minutes. Just as I get there, guess what rolls up behind me? Hint: its big, green, and I waited on it for 30 minutes. I was kind of pissed.

Jump to bus terminal

Turns out the bus terminal also doubles as the local market, a very very large, complex local market. I did my usual thing and asked around for directions to where the actual bus terminal was, and as usual, I got a bad set of directions that turned out good anyway. I got sent towards the athletics complex, where I happened to know there was a small climbing wall, I figured that since I had already walked down there, I should definitely check it out. I talked to the nice man with the shot gun and he let me take a peak. Luckily it was closed so there really wasn’t much I could do with it. It was the same kind of high quailty I was expecting from a guatemalan climbing wall, 45 feet of modular plywood angles, old holds, poorly taped routes, and old fouton matresses for crashpads. Its probably better that I didn’t climb it. I left the wall remembering how good the wall looked, one of those things where the longer you don’t have it, the lower your standards will go. I then stumbled my way into the bus terminal and found a bus that was direct xela to los encuentros, cutting my return trip by a bus. Got back to pana just fine. Did a little reading for my extended essay and then went to Solomans Porch.

Back to the grind tomorrow.

And I barely have any battery left on the computer now…

And definitely didnt think my attention span would last to 1400 words.

More later, people.

LEAVE COMMENTS!

Quick post

Worked at mayan families again. Same kind of stuff as before. The only real difference is that I moved stuff around today, and thats about it. I'm leaving for Xela tomorrow morning and will be there until probably sunday morning, so no posts for the next day. I am traveling light so I wont have my laptop and I'm still debating the camera.

Post more in a few days,

Parker

Second verse same as the first...

read tuesday to know what I did today.

Maybe leaving for xela tomorrow or friday, so if i dont post, you'll know why. Hopefully i can find the movie theater there and see the new transformers=]

Mayan Families

Today was another one of those spontaneous days where you don't really know what you're gonna do when you wake up. I called up to Jay (the guy I was supposed to go with to the clinic today) but he was in Antigua with his inlaws and wasnt gettin back until this afternoon. So, after finding out I didnt actually have to be anywhere at all today, I went back to sleep for another hour and a half. Then I got up for real and went to work with Mayan Families instead.

Spent most of the day translating letters. Pretty standard stuff. Headed back to the apartment around 4 and was lazy for the rest of the afternoon. Now I'm up at Solomans Porch messing around on my computer (because there is food and wifi here too).

Im kind of contemplating leaving to go somewhere this weekend. Somewhere with a movie theater showing first run american movies, like the new transformers. Unfortunately that place most likely doesnt exist. Now im going to go interwebz searching for it...

Interesting Cultural Observation of the Week: Most of the paintings that are done here are not portraits. Instead most show the back of the head (usually a woman with braids or a man working) or they are very cartoonish faces and not done very well.

More photos

Pen salesmen and pot dealers...

...i have figured out, are the same people. they approach you on the pen that they can get one made with your name, you turn them down, and then as they slip away mumbling something about selling pot. it seems much less obvious than the blunt "want some ganja" approach. At the same time, to those who know, it makes them stand out very easy, just a little piece of cardboard with pens and bracelets and a backpack on, not hard to spot. (got offered it twice today by a "pen salesman")

Anyway, continuing on from that little bunny trail, yesterday was about as slow as saturday, which was really nice. Part of that might have to do with the fact that it rained ALLLLLLLL DAAAAYYYYYYYYY which really sucked. It rained all day today too, but I at least was in a car or inside whenever it rained really hard. Speaking of being inside, I got to work in the actual farmacia today instead of just counting pills or sorting drugs in a lonely closet, I got to help fill perscriptions and hang out with Maria and Jose, both of which are really cool. Then I headed back to Pana, walked some laps on Calle Santander (because I had nothing better to do) and bought a wool jacket that is in really cool colors.

Anyway, some weird tourist guy just asked me if there is free wifi where I am eating at...in very broken spanish. I cant decide if that is a good thing or not.

Food's getting cold, more later.

Laziness

Today was really lazy for me. I just kind of hung out and watched Fight Club (rented via Solomans Porch.) And I must say, that is pretty much an amazing movie. I kind of forgot to add on my last post that I came back to Chichi by chicken buses. That was an adventure all in itself. Anyway, thats about all that happened today. And it looks like its back to the lonliness for a while, so I think some of y'all should totally come and stay with me=]

Currently battling....

evil internet problems. My computer doesnt seem to want to work anywhere, so I'm on a laptop at Solomon's Porch.

Anyway, I'm back from Chichi and I am really tired. I would be completely and totally ok with going back to my apartment and sleeping until monday, but that's just not like me.

I think going to work with the Florida HoH group was a good choice. They were cool people and it got me out of Pana for a few days which was nice as well. I pretty much worked triage in their clinics all 3 days that I was with them and that was a lottttttttt of talking. How do you feel? What hurts? How does it hurt? How long has it been hurting? Is that all? Are you taking any medicine? Do you have any allergies to medicine? How many pregnancies have you had? (Along with many more personal questions that I wont go in to)

Other than triage, I got to have a really cool experience last night. I went with Jose and Scott (a Florida Firefighter) to the clinic at Camanchaj to educate the bomberos voluntarios about delivering babies*insert joke here.* I took some pictures and did a little bit of translation help when Jose didnt know exactly what something meant. But I really thought it was great to see more go on with a trip than pulling teeth or handing out medicines (although these are important in building trust with the people, they are not usually long term fixes.) Instead, this was educating those who can in turn go out and help the people where they live repeatedly, and aid in what might not be as easy to do otherwise.

More later,

Parker

Interesting Fact: Although the national language of Guatemala is Spanish, there are 23 Mayan dialects spoken all over the country, and I understand .01 of them. I know a few words out of 2 of them and that is just about it. As a result, any time I get outside of the bigger cities, I can only talk with a few of the people who actually know Spanish. Its kind of frustrating....

Death by pharmacy

Death by pharmacy

So this morning was probably the single worst thing you could possibly make me do. Leave me in a room, by myself, to sort medicine. I just about died of a mixture of bordem, lonliness, and being surrounded by entirely too many “cherry flavored” everythings. I noticed that everything was cherry. Cherry this, cherry that, everything cherry, but we all really know that it tastes like crap. If you really want to get kids these days to take anything, you should disguise it all in french fries and chocolate bars. However, I did find another way to entertain myself, and it was the only thing that kept me from falling over right there. It was to listen to my ipod (best last minute decision of the day) and to make up an interesting combo of all the different qualities of drugs I had seen. The best one of the day was expired twice daily cherry flavored animal shaped multivitamin supposotories, now 50% more in every dose! Anyway, around lunch time, Dr. Plunk came in and said he wasn’t feeling so good so he wanted to head back to Pana (needless to say, I nearly beat him out the door.)

After we got back to pana, I made a PB and Syrup sandwich and then hopped a tuk tuk out to Sharon’s house, the woman who runs mayan families. It was a zoo there, literally. Children and adopted dogs everywhere. I then spent the next couple of hours translating letters from children to their sponsors, which was kind of cool because all of them were extremely gracious for what their sponsors had done for them.

After I got done translating the letters, I headed back to my apartment and dropped off some laundry. I then proceeded to take a nap until 6ish when I went back to pick up my laundry. I figure its stimulating the local economy and its easier than doing it by hand in some concrete sink.

Tomorrow, I’m most likely headed up to Chichicastenango to work with a group from Florida because there is very little for me to do at the clinics. I’m kind of looking forward to that, I just have to make sure I pack everything that ill need for the next few days…Im not sure if I’ll have any internet so mom and dad, don’t freak out if I don’t post anything until Friday night or Saturday.

Slowwwwwww Sundayyyyy

Today went a little slower than yesterday. I still woke up at 7 ish whenever I didn’t need to be up until around 10, its kind of frustrating. Anyway, I watched some TV until it was time for me to get dressed and go with Phil Plunk to a friends house for a bible study thing with a few of his friends. It was kind of different than anything else I’d really done so I didn’t say much(partially because I didn’t know them and really didn’t know what was going on.) We had some soup at Bonnie’s house and then I walked my way back to my apartment and hung out till about 3:30.

At 3:30 I headed out to Soloman’s Porch, a café type thing run by an American couple who use the café as a home base for their orgaanization that as he described it “is many things all at the same time.” They try and do all sorts of stuff from social work, construction, and religious work all at the same. The service was different too, a very contemporary, relaxed feel. It was a little hard for me to keep up with the message because they translated the sermon in spanish as he went, and as all translations go, it was slow and slightly different from what was originally said. Afterwards, I talked to Lloyd (the guy who owns it) and he said that they were always looking for extra help for all of their projects, so I may be helping out there too, should they need me/should I want to.

Tomorrow I’ll be headed to Camanchaj to work in the clinic there for the first time. Don’t really know what to expect so I’m trying not to expect much, it makes it easier that way. No matter what, i think i'll still be able to make a hand at something.

Passing observation while channel surfing: Titles of TV shows and movies are not literally translated. Man vs. Wild had nothing about men or wild in the title, Deadliest Catch didn’t have any death in it, and Coach Carter had nothing to do with coaches or carter. Interesting…

Anyone can leave comments=]

Hey man, want some ganja?

I’ve been asked that exact question twice today, and my answer is: NO! I don’t want some freaking ganja! Offer me some chicky’s, at least they are tasty and aren’t illegal in any countries! Just because I’m white and between the ages of 17 and 25 does not mean I smoke pot!

End Rant

Chicky's!

I’ve been asked that exact question twice today, and my answer is: NO! I don’t want some freaking ganja! Offer me some chicky’s, at least they are tasty and aren’t illegal in any countries! Just because I’m white and between the ages of 17 and 25 does not mean I smoke pot!

End Rant

Anyway, other than being asked if I wanted any pot twice today in poor english, I had a really awesome day. I woke up at about 5:40 this morning, laid in bed for another 3 hours (a luxury in itself) and then got up and dressed. I headed over to Los Barandales for breakfast, it’s the same place that I get internet at. Anyway, I sat down outside for a kind of lonely breakfast whenever a group of four college-aged students came and sat down at the table next to me. I started talking to them, the usual conversation you have with anyone who is traveling, where you from, what are you doing, etc. Right about that time another 6 of their friends showed up and it became a pretty big group really fast. It was cool talking with them, and definitely better than eating alone. Anyway, we talked a little longer about Guatemala and what to do in Pana, then I headed out to meet up with Brittany and a group of her friends from North Carolina who are all here for the same social work/spanish stuff.

We all hopped a truck and headed to San Antonio de Palopo, another village on the lake to check out their Corpus Christi festival, it was pretty cool and that’s where some of the pictures I posted up are from. It was basically like a super small fair that mostly revolved around the local market and a marimba ochestra concerty type thing. We hung around there for a little while, some of the girls got hit on by an extremely drunk Guatemalan in his 40’s (we saw more than a few borrachos running around, mind you this was at about 12 in the afternoon.) Around 2 we hopped back on another truck, it’s the cheapest way to get back and forth between the pueblos, and we came back to Pana. I was tired so I watched some TV and took a nap until about 5:30. I attempted to watch South Park in spanish, but the humor just doesn’t translate very well at all. After my nap, I went out and ran back into Brittany so we went and hung out at a restaurant that caters to gringos called Solomans Porch. After that I headed over to the Dispensa (spelled W-A-L-M-A-R-T, literally, walmart owns it, sorry mom) and picked up a plunger(because my toilet was clogged), some bread and syrup(to complete the ingredients required for a peanut butter and syrup sandwich) and some shampoo and soap (because I didn’t pack a big bottle of it to save space). This pretty much leads me back to here at Los Barandales, watching the world go by, and sipping on a limonada con soda in a margarita glass, feeling a little sunburnt and just chillin, a great day.

Until tomorrow,

Parker

Happy thought of the day: I was kind of wondering what I was going to do for money for this entire trip until I remembered that I get a paycheck either tomorrow or Monday=]

Second happy thought: tell the stoned and half drunk guy trying to sell you pens while your updating your blog that you are from guatemala and he gives you a fist pound, apologizes, and goes away!

Pics: Santiago boats(top) and Corpus Christi in San Antonio de Palopo(not top)

Will post more photos tomorrow, goes super slow and didnt work last time. and oh yeah, i keep forgetting to add it on here, i got to pull a root tip out of a womans mouth yesterday, it was pretty cool.

(now its realllly over.)

Hola,

Its been one week since I have slept in my own bed, and so far I think I’m doing ok on my own. As I’ve said, my apartment is really nice and it is on the “main street” of Pana. Working with HoH for the past week has been a really good, eye-opening experience. I didn’t really realize how much of a lack of proper and affordable health care there was out here until this week, nor did I realize just how little the people here are isolated from one village to the next, and as a result they do not have very many oportunities at all. This week we saw approximately 650 people in four and a half days and a majority of them spoke a local dialect called Kachiquel and very little Spanish. This made it really intersting to work because most of the time it required us to relay messages between the dentist, to the English-Spanish speaker, to the Spanish-Kachiquel speaker, to the patient and back, seeing as there was only one guy who knew both Kachiquel and English. For the most part, Rafael and I depended on a really nice local woman named Letty. She works for an organization called Mayan Families which emphasizes improving the living conditions of the indegenious people. Some of their missions include running a preschool, giving small loans to small businesses to help them grow, and installing gas stoves that can replace the dangerous wood-burning stoves that are common in many houses here. After talking for a while with the woman who started the organization, Sharon, I might end up doing some work translating and helping out with the installation of the stoves next week with a group from Stanford University(a little Ivy is coming to Guatemala.)

On a sadder note, we did see and take teeth out of a girl who was 6, was the size of a 3 year old, weighed 24 pounds, and couldn't talk. It was sad to hear here scream for the better part of an hour as Dr. Ken and Dr. Scott took out 5 or 7 of her teeth. At the same time, it was really inspiring to see the mother do her best to take care of a child that would have still had little help in the U.S.

Anyway, as you can tell, the past week has been awesome, although now I’m a little lonely without all the cool people from HoH. On the upside, I figured out where the wifi signal is coming from, and worked out a deal with the guy who runs it so I can use it. The only downside is that because of all the walls in between the wifi and my apartment, I can only get signal outside of my apartment and across the street at a restaurant type place. As for the photos I promised, I am moving that until tomorrow because a few girls I met from Mayan Families and I are going back to Santiago to check out the Festival de Corpus Cristi (the festival of the body of christ) which is kind of like Halloween in June for them) and I think I will get some really cool stuff there. As I heard its all about everyone has evil spirits inside of them and to scare them away they put on scarry woodcarved masks and set of the worlds loudest firecrackers(literally called bombs because everyone within a mile of it can hear it go off.)

Anyway, I’ll post more tomorrow and to replace all the photos I promised, heres a picture of a water bottle in the restaurant im in.=]

Cultural Observation of the Week. Breasts, Babies, and Cellphones.

Everyone has them, and they're not afraid to show them off when they need to use them. All the women here have a bazillion kids that they are not afraid of feeding anywhere and everywhere(seriously about the bazillion kids, I had women tell me that they had "only" 6 kids, and the most so far is 15, thats 95 months spent pregnant for those of you who cant do math).eye contact eye contact eye contact. And cellphones, everyone has them like in the US, and they can talk on them while doing pretty much anything, riding motorcycles, driving cars, riding bikes, feeding babies...they're everywhere.

Mas despues

Today was a really good day and I am really tired. We worked in a
clinic really close to Pana in an aldea called San Jorge La Laguna. I
spent half the day translating for the dentistas and half the day
doing intake for all of the patients that had not been seen yet. I
would write more but I dont really have time. I will probably make a
big post with pictures either tomorrow or friday after the group
leaves.

Hasta luego,

Parker

dentista parte 2

Another fun day spent as a dentista/traductor(translator)/recepcionista/farmacista at the clinic here in a school in Pana. we saw a lot of people and tomorrow we are going to head up to San Jorje de la Laguna. it is starting to get confusing for me translating because occasionally i'll try and just repeat back to someone in the same language what i heard instead of changing it to whatever language they understand.

More to come.

dentista

today we went on our first clinic voyage. i got assigned/volunteered to work with the dentists and it was a blast! translating is really cool and getting to help people get their teeth pulled is also kind of interesting/completely and totally disgusting, the first guy we helped had 10 teeth pulled! pretty crazy. anyway, getting to be a part of something that can give people a better, happier, and less painful life is always really cool for me. at the same time, it was really sad to see kids so young have teeth pulled, and a few my age who had to have adult teeth removed because they lacked the necesary supplies to save the tooth or take care of it in the first place. im definitely looking forward to the next month and a half, it is already a great trip and i hope yall are all having as great of a summer as i am.

until later,

parker

p.s. taking pepto before going to bed turns your tounge into a brown chia pet! kinda scary if you dont know what is going on.

llegue en pana

yesterday i arrived in panajachel(pana) and spent some time with the hands of healing walking around and eating dinner. the city is really cool, the food is good, and the lake is amazing. my apartment is on pretty much the main tourist street in pana and is really close to the lake too. so far my ventures here in spanish have been fairly limited because i have been mostly with the hands of healing group, but they are not completely gone. for instance, today we went to santiago, a village across lago atitlan from pana. for the first hour we walked around and pretty much everyone but me bought stuff (i figured i would have plenty of time to shop). anyway, as we met up at a restaurant for lunch, a native girl was sitting in the corner of the porch. we could all tell that she had something wrong with her, but we figured she was just a local sitting at the restaurant. as it turns out, she was not a girl and she wasnt there by coincidence. she was really close to 25, but she wasnt sure, and she had heart problems that caused her to be short of breath. there wasnt a whole lot to do for her because she was already getting help from another project in santiago they wouldnt or couldnt tell her what she had, they could only treat her. so we gave her some lasics and went on our way. now, the part i failed to mention before is that because she was a native and her parents were dead, she only knew a local dialect of mayan, so to translate we had to go from the doctors to rafael(and a little bit of me) to one of the waiters, to her, and back down the chain. nonetheless, it was an interesting first look for me into what i will be having to deal with over the next few weeks.

this is only one of the many stories i have here, but i really cant tell much more because i just happened into an internet cafe without my laptop and so i have a really bad keyboard to type this all on. will come back soon and write more=] (and i dont have the password to the wifi that is close to my apartment)

El otro parte...

The other half of my day was pretty cool. After I got settled into my hostel, I decided that it would be best if I picked up a cell phone. So, upon the suggestion of Kent, a cool guy from Holland who helps out at the hostel I'm at, I headed to a fairly large indoor-outdoor mall type thing to pick up a cell phone. Now, this would be relatively boring, until you factor in the fact that a) I had to take a cab through Guatemala City (not the best drivers) and b) I had to do every single part of buying it and activating it and coordinating the cab completely in Spanish.

After doing all of that, I started to feel a little more comfortable speaking Spanish, because people actually understood me and I could more or less understand them. So, I headed back to the hostel and kicked around for little while, almost falling asleep several times, and then ate some dinner (penne con alfredo). In the midst of almost falling asleep and watching Hitch in spanish, I happened downstairs as the other guy staying at the hostel was there. Turns out he is from Philadelpia and has been volunteering here for the past 3 ish months. We started to talk to Lorena, the owner of the hostel, and then continued on for close to another 2 hours. We talked politics, economics, religion, travel, and pretty much everything in between. However, the part that made it realllllllyyyy cool for me is that we all three knew english fluently, yet we all chose to speak entirely in spanish.

Tomorrow, I wake up and head to Pana with Hands of Healing, and I'm super psyched about the adventure!

BTW, I changed it so that anyone can now leave comments. Y'all should test it out;]

ARRIVED!!!!

I'm here now. Sitting on my bed in my hostel. Kinda crazy stuff. All went well with the traveling (except for the waking up at 4:30, that was not so cool.) Now that I'm here, I'm probably going to go try and find a cell phone. I'm afraid it might be just a little too late to go visit the museum I want to see, but I'm still going to try...

Interesting observation thus far:

Facebook automatically shows up in Español.

Will update with the rest of the day later!!!!!

Almost gone!

Just about packed up, just working on sending out emails to everyone
about this blog. If you are reading this right now, you should send it
out to anyone who you think would appreciate it or that I might have
missed (and if you found this through someone else because I forgot to
email you, I'm sorry.) Anyway, I'm super excited and slightly nervous.
Hopefully I can sleep tonight, and my next post will probably be from
Guatemala City sometime tomorrow!!! Emails and comments are greatly
appreciated!

34 hours

34 hours and counting!!!! I'm pretty much all packed, just need to get a few odds and ends together. Ziplock bags are my best friend right now. Anyway, I leave out Friday morning and will be staying in Guatemala City for the first night, then heading out the next morning with a group from my church that is coming down for a week or so. I'll do my best to keep this updated so my Mom doesn't get toooooooo crazy and try and find me or anything, and so the rest of you can read about my adventures. Your comments and e-mails will always be appreciated=]

-Parker

9 Days

And it still feels like forever away. Wayyyyyy too much going on at once for me to even be close to totally prepared for this trip.

21 Days...

I saw this today and it reminded me that I hadnt touched this thing for the past few days. And it made me laugh too, so there is always just that.

Anyway, I leave in 21 days! Pretty much have everything already set and ready to go, so now I just have to ride this whole school thing out and hope my parents don't kill me before I get on the plane.

Pasé lo que pasé.

"Its your world, I'm just passing through."

So i sat down tonight to eat some Taco Bueno just before i got down to the studying for my AP history test and I flipped on the tv. Shortly after, whatever movie was on came up with the coolest quote that really exemplifies what I want for this trip. Seeing as I really will just be passing through their, I want to try and be kind of open minded and just kind of see what its like to be there, without forming any big opinions on the place.

That being said, I leave 4 weeks form tomorrow, I'm pretty anxious about it, but on the upside, everything that I know about as of now is in line so I can actually just relax for the next couple of weeks, finish up school, and then pack up and get out of here. Thats what i really am hoping for...

Now its time to study=[

Bittersweet

Locked in on the efficiency(just the basics apartment, bed, stove, fridge, fireplace, bath) in Panajachel today. Feeling much better about the entire trip now that I have a bed to sleep in. I'm hoping that this whole Pig Flu doesn't screw up this trip for me, because that would epically suck, but I'm sticking to my philosophy that everyone is just overreacting and that they need to chillax just a little more every now and then. It's whatever though. Hell Weekend/Heck Weekend/Smiles and Hugs Weekend this weekend!

Slight Change of Plans

After talking with Tom from Salud y Paz, we decided that it would be better for me if I went to Panajachel, a city about 90 minutes east of Xela and on Lake Atitlan. Everything sounded slightly easier if I just went to Pana, and it would also allow me to work some with the school in Comenchaj which I think would be really cool, so I think everything will work out better. I wont have quite as big of an apartment, but I think I'll live.

We shall see...

Maybe...

Got a hold of the guy from Casa Xelaju (the place that I have been trying to get an apartment from) and he said that there should be something available for me while I'm there, which is good news. Now I just have to keep compulsively checking my email for an evil "failed send" message from gmail or a reply from him, whichever comes first.

In other news, Smiles and Hugs weekend (a.k.a. hell weekend) is next weekend and I'm pretty stoked about it, seeing as I feel like I can actually climb again, but we shall see...

EDITTED TO ADD:

I am going to kill my gmail, i got his test message to me, but it put it in the SPAM folder! the one email i really care about right now got put in the SPAM folder. *handfacematch*

40 Days till lift off....

...and I still don't know where I'm gonna be sleeping...this sucks.