First Week in BA

I'm almost done with my first full week in Buenos Aires...the city is incredibly overwhelming at first (well, it still is!).  It's really big, kind of hard to navigate at first, and just sort of difficult to get a feel for.  I feel bad for the people who come from like little towns out West who are shocked by cities in general!

IFSA (the name of my study abroad program) is very hands-off ... we go to a central location each day for orientation and Spanish classes, but besides that, they really don't give you any direction on how to get around, what to do, etc.  I think it's a good thing for sure, just different from Guatemala, where someone was telling us what to do every day. 

The very first day, we got a short course on how to use the "Guia T", which is their bus map, and then they shooed us out the door to go home. Yikes. That was difficult, to say the least.  The colectivos (buses) here are very complicated!!

I live in eastern Palermo, near Recoleta. It's a great location, kind of set off the main road near me, Santa Fe, but really close to bus stops and Subte stops.  I live with an older couple, named Mirta and Federico, and they are both really sweet.  They've had a lot of students come through, so they had a lot of things here for me (blow dryer, converters, cell phone, etc) and they know things that Americans like, I guess.  They eat dinner ridiculously late though, which will take some getting used to.  They eat at like 9 PM, by which time I'm definitely not hungry anymore, haha.  Also, both Mirta and Fede are "a la dieta" (on a diet), so they give me all the food they can't eat! We've actually ordered in for dinner for I think every dinner so far. .. maybe she doesn't like to cook? Oh well, its still good.

I haven't explored much of BA yet, besides Palermo a bit and Recoleta a bit.  I think maybe this afternoon, I'll go to San Telmo or some other neighborhood with my friends just to see more of the city.   BA is definitely very European ... they say a lot of it is very Italian, I've never been to Italy, so don't know about that, but I definitely see resemblances to Paris.  Lots of sidewalk cafes, very stylishly dressed people, attractive people in general...things like that.  Actually, we don't stick out at all in terms of appearance, minus the American dress.  I wear my pink North Face fleece around, and that is a sure sign of an American haha.  

I'm definitely having a good time so far, I can't wait to really get to know the city well and after that, start traveling around Argentina!

Guatemala Recap

Well I'm out of Guatemala now - we left on Saturday morning.  We spent the last week in Antigua and at the Belen convent doing a recap of our last 2 weeks in the field, giving presentations, discussing future changes, doing final Spanish evals, and things like that.  The week was actually kind of boring, but I liked being with my Magdalena family again, and the routine was kind of nice to fall back into.

Regarding my last post, I take back my ranking of the street food woman who sold me tamales.  As delicious as they were, I'm not sure if they were worth the ensuing sickness. (Who knows, they might not have been from her)  Anyway, when I got back to Antigua, I got a massive fever for a day, and then stomach sickness for the next 3.  I actually just about an hour took my last dose of Cipro, so hopefully all bacteria are gone.  

I'm sad to be out of Latin America now - living there was so different day to day, everything was fast paced and lively, yet at the same time, no one really hurried and people are more relaxed than Americans.  Life is just very rich and colorful.  We saw some really amazing places, some incredibly beautiful natural scenes, bustling cities, but also some very poor villages struggling to support themselves.  In every place, though, all the guatemaltecos were very accommodating, welcoming, and friendly to foreigners.  I met some amazing friends and people who had really strong passions for their work.  Everyone - friends and colleagues - really inspired me with their work.  I don't think I can say enough about how awesome my 2 months were - I do know I want to go back to Guatemala sometime in the future for sure. 

I'm in Buenos Aires now for the rest of the year - it's a huge change from Guatemala.  Probably even more so than the jump from Guatemala to New Jersey.  Anyway, I'm going to keep blogging about my Argentine semester, but I'm going to change the picture and title and everything ...just to keep the same name.  Later!

My top foods in Pana ...

It's difficult to order these in terms of ranking, but I'll try. Rankings are based on taste and price!

1) 1 quetzal frozen chocolate covered fruit or 1 quetzal homemade ice creams. This is probably the most random find ever, but they're so good. Some couple that owns a hotel down some random alley has a whole freezer of frozen fruits and little ice cream cups they make. Only 12 cents!

2) Deli sandwiches from Pana Meats. These are sort of expensive, 25Q, but they are big and come with a side too. It would be considered a good sub sandwich even back in the US. I'm pretty sure they import their meat, too.

3) Pupuseria. Pupusas are the national food of El Salvador and they are really great! It's basically two tortillas filled with cheese or vegetables or beans or meat then grilled on the stove. They come with some sort of pickled cabbage which is really good. Also, 1 pupusa is pretty filling, and each one only costs 8Q. I want to find a pupuseria in New York or NJ somewhere when I get back next year!

4) Uruguayan restaurant. I have no idea why it's called Uruguayan because they have only normal food, but they give you free refillable garlic bread with any order. However, we've been here so many times that I think they don't like us anyone, and have terrible service. On the other hand, they do have 5Q refillable coffee.

5) Chuchitas from a woman on the street for breakfast. These are basically just tamales with a little piece of meat in the middle and a salsa on the top. I probably shouldn't have eaten these, but they were only 3Q and they were really good.

Noticeably lacking: Good coffee shops. All the coffee here (minus Uruguayan restaurant) is around 8Q, expensive, and there's no good coffee shops to sit down and read in, or use wifi in. Also, I've gotten instant coffee before when I paid 7Q for a cup. What a rip off! There's also no good Internet here. Its either ridiculously expensive or ridiculously cheap but the people that work there are mean. (I'm currently using the latter).

Panajachel so far ...

We got to Pana on Monday afternoon ... its a cool little hippie-town on the shore of Lake Atitlan(left), which is this huge volcanic crater-lake in the Solola region. Its definitely a more touristy town aimed almost exclusively at foreigners. We have 2 hotel rooms here, so its nice to have the private bathroom and shower of a hotel, but its basically a hostel situation in terms of beds. The lake is really beautiful, also its really dirty and contaminated and when you get up close you see it littered with garbage.

We've spent 2 days so far in a little village on the other side of the lake called San Antonio Palopo. Its a short pickup truck ride away (which are really fun, by the way!).

We're having our weekly campaign there on Saturday, so we went on Tuesday to do publicity for the campaign. SolCom has a good relationship with a weaving co-op in San Antonio (we're having the campaign at the weaving co-op, which is an integral part of the town, so its a good location), and this week we-re also doing some publicity work for the co-op. We made a brochure for them and we're working on a video about the weaving process. Yesterday while we were in San Antonio, my assignment )along with one of my friends, Amanda) was to go into the local elementary schools and talk to the directors about our campaign and then talk to groups of kids about the importance of clean water. Meeting with the directors went well ... he was excited about getting reading glasses and even was going to buy a water filter for the school, but talking to little kids was not so great! Little kids are pretty harsh! My Spanish is pretty decent, but to talk to little kids whose first language is Kakquichel about something thats pretty boring to them is hard! Amanda and I sort of ran out of there with our water filter when we were done. Haha.

Today we took a boat across the lake to San Juan, another little village. We visited another weaving co-op (there are a TON of weaving co-ops here, which makes it hard for one to stand out over another) to give them another brochure we had made as well as help them with a homestay program they're trying to start. We went around and looked at all the houses to make sure things were up to standard and correct things such as see-through shower curtains. Haha.

Oh, also on Wednesday we took the morning to go ziplining! It was pretty awesome .... there were 8 cables, and it took probably an hour to do all of them. We got really cool views of the lake as well as the jungley forest below us. There were also some spider monkeys ... the ziplining was in a Nature Reserve. To be honest, I kind of thought ziplining would be a bit more extreme than it was, but it was still really cool and definitely worth my $15. I'll put up pictures later once I get a better internet connection.

Xela Weekend Excursions ... Amazing

We went to Fuentes Georginas on Friday afternoon, which is a natural hot spring area about an hour outside of Xela. It was really incredible ... we drove about half an hour on dusty dirt roads in the middle of nowhere, and then all of a sudden there were these beautiful hot springs with a bunch of gringos (what everyone calls foreigners!). The water was legitimately very hot, although I think it varies by day. By the water source the water was near boiling and very sulphury. It was like a sauna and hot tub all in one ... very relaxing.


On Saturday night and through Sunday morning 3 friends and I climbed Volcan Tajumulco, which is the highest peak in Central America. It was really really incredible, one of the best things Ive ever done in my life! We left Xela at 1030 PM and got to the base in San Marcus at around 1230, and started hiking then. It was kind of creepy hiking in the dark ... I thought so mostly because our guide was telling us about wild coyotes. He was also telling us stories about "los espiritus", the spirits, which were really interesting, not because I believed them, but because he actually did. Spirit stories are so engrained into the culture that really everyone (even educated people, like our guide, David) believes them.

Anyway, the summit of the volcano was just amazing. It was freezing, winds over 50 mph, but we actually had a 360 view of Mexico, Guatemala, and the Pacific. Also, it was sort of cloudy when we first got up there at sunrise, which was actually cool because it looked like the view out of an airplane, except we weren{t in an airplane. It cleared up really soon though, and we got our awesome views.

After the hike back, I ate ice cream and slept for the rest of the day. I woke up to eat dinner, then slept again for like 9 hours.

Campaign in Flores

On Saturday we had our 3rd campaign, and it went really really well.  We split into two groups, and 5 of us went to a town about 2 hours outside of Xela called Flores.  It was a lot bigger than the other towns we've done campaigns in so far, so that was promising for a good turnout.  

When we got to the campaign location on Saturday morning, there were already probably 15 people in line waiting for their eye exam.  For the next 4 hours we had a really steady stream of people.  People would get a number when they walked in, and then actually have to wait a little bit (we could have used a couple more people doing eye exams!)

 before one of us could talk to them.  It ended up being really successful - we sold 35 pairs of glasses and a couple other things.  I thought it was really fun and really rewarding to do so much work at a campaign - it was great Spanish practice, talking to a ton of people, and it is really interesting to see a cross section of the population of each town.  A lot of people had problems that we can't deal with (i.e. don't need reading glasses, or eyedrops for redness and irritation), but a decent amount actually get really excited to be able to see up close again, to read, or sew, or something like that.

After I'd been in my own room doing eye exams for probably 3 hours, a woman (as she was

 walking out) pointed out an "animal underneath the table".  Turns out to be a tarantula, the size of an outstretched palm.  It was incredibly disgusting. It had been there right next to me for a long time!  Did I mention that this campaign took place in the town's public health facility, IN the doctor's office? Tarantulas in the exam room .... that wouldn't really fly in the US!

After our campaign, we ate lunch in a 'comedor' in Flores .... comedores are everywhere in Guatemala, but we've never eaten in one because you can't really guarantee cleanliness.  A Peace Corps girl told us she ate at this one all the time, though, so we figured it was fine.  A comedor is basically someone's house that they open up for people to eat in.  You go sit down in their house and then they bring you whatever they made for lunch that day - we had a vegetable soup (called caldo), tortillas, and some fruit drink thing.  It was really delicious! Also, it was only 12Q (1.5 dollars) for everything.  It was definitely something typically Guatemalan that I'm glad I did at least once!