Fall Update 2010
After travelling this summer, we have spent the last three months settling into old routines and …work.
We did have some time before school started in August to travel within Guatemala. We decided to use Xela as a home base and divide up. Haviland signed up for a week of language classes and Sam and I were going to explore the area and play. To add to the experience, we stayed with a Guatemalan family who rent out extra rooms to language school students (and family!) Our host mom was a very nice woman; she cooked for us, talked Spanish to us (really fast!) and made us feel at home. Haviland finally had a good teacher and her skills and confidence grew a lot over the week.
Sam and I scheduled a day climbing at a beautiful cliff only 10 minutes from town. Sam had a great day; he climbed hard, had a great attitude and practiced rappelling. The next day, we joined a community service project sponsored by the language school. We took a bus to a nearby pueblo and spent the day finishing a new, fuel efficient stove for a family. Instead of cooking over a pot balanced on 3 rocks, the new stove can use less fuel, cook more efficiently and allow the smoke to escape out a chimney. The family burned trash to cook their food on the old stove and the smoke caused many respiratory problems for the entire family.We spent the last part of our week at the famous water park, called, Xocomil. It was AWESOME! We spent our first day running up and down 100’s of stairs to ride the water slides. Sam was so excited – all day! We ran to every part of the park until they kicked us out at the end of the day. We stayed at a beautiful hotel area right across the street, ate and immediately went to bed. The next day was spent exploring the many pools and slides that the hotel had to offer and eating at their large breakfast buffet.It was a nice end to our summer before school started.
Sam is now in second grade and has easily made the adjustment into elementary school. We are pleased both with his attitude toward school work and his performance. This year we are working on his spelling – his Spanish teacher challenges them with words like, “arbol genealogico” and his English teacher tests them with words like “make” and “tie”. We are finding out how weird English really is. Sam can spell fine in Spanish, but the weird rules for English are giving him trouble. The silent “e” sucks! Beyond the academics, Sam is really enjoying the after school clubs. He is building Lego robots with our hippie computer tech guy from Maine, he is using a back strap loom to weave with a little old Guatemalan lady, he is taking 2 days of sports and is in Destination Imagination which is a competitive program that encourages problem solving and creativity. Besides school, he is losing teeth like crazy and is generally doing well.
Haviland is enjoying a year without master’s classes and without being the team leader of 6th grade. She is focusing on just her classes and loves it! She is continuing Spanish classes once a week and is making some great progress! We are both preparing our resumes one more time, in search of a new school for next year. We think 3 years is a good amount of time in Guatemala, so we are looking for a new adventure. Haviland has many countries that interest her and we will see what happens. However, we have no problems staying here one more year if the perfect job doesn’t present itself.
As for me, I am finding that my 7th grade class is not as bad as their reputation made them out to be. Although their skills are low, they are generally nice kids. Out of school, I am also trying to continue my Spanish studies and I joined a yoga/Pilates class to try and fix my sore back. Although not 40 yet, my body decided to start hurting after I run for longer distances. I am hoping the stretching and yoga will help both a knee issue and a lower back annoyance. Luckily, the pain isn’t too great to stop me from getting outside and having fun. A couple of weekends ago, I was able to compete in a 24 hour adventure race with my racing partner, Steph. The race started Saturday morning and was scheduled to finish Sunday around mid day. The race consisted of 8km of rowing across Lake Amatitlan (the most polluted lake in Central America) – no one wanted fall in or even get splashed with toxic water! We had 30-40 km of mountain biking up to Volcan Pacaya, a little bit of swimming across the old caldera of the volcano and more than 40 km of hiking/trekking/running. Out of 16 teams that we competed against, only two actually finished and our team had the best time!
For now, we are happy to say the raining season is about over. We survived the rainiest season this country has endured in decades and the wettest I have ever lived through. With the sun brings more days outside and more opportunities to go exploring. We hope all is well with you. Feel free to write to let us know what you have been up to.
As always, there are pictures at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/home
Ken
Sam
And Haviland
