Training Trip to Lake Atitlan

The weeks here seem to be flying by. We are constantly on the go and before we know it we will be sworn in as official volunteers. A week ago we were eagerly getting ready to leave on our first field based training. A few days before taking off, Kari came down with a bacterial infection, but tried to fight through it to make the trip. Antibiotics work wonders here. We started off the weekend with an overnight trip to Antigua with the rest of the training group. It was the first time we were officially allowed to leave our site overnight and everyone decided to take advantage of it. Not to mention, take advantage of a hot shower and some really good food in Antigua. We returned on Sunday afternoon, only to begin packing for our first week out in the field. We left early Monday morning and headed out to San Juan La Laguna on Lake Atitlan. Before arriving, we stopped at the Mayan ruins of Iximche, near Tecpan.










We got to San Juan in the afternoon and were able to witness some of the landslide devastation caused by Hurricane Stan late last year. Unbelivable. We spent the night in San Juan and attended lectures on waste management and developing groups within the community we will be assigned to. Early the next morning, the two groups,ecotourism and environmental education, split up and went their separate ways for the next two days.











Corby's group (ecotourism) stayed in San Juan for another night and took a tour of the town, where they visited the site of Maximon (a Guatemalan Saint worshiped by many people here, but not acknowledged by the Catholic church) and also came upon a Pre-Columbian artifact in the middle of a coffee field. Their group was also able to take a swim in Lake Atitlan, which some consider the most beautiful lake in the world. The following day the group went to a park to help build trails up to a zip-line. The reward afterwards was being able to ride the longest zip-line in Central America. It sounds like the ecotourism group has more fun!??











Meanwhile, Kari's group (environmental education) took a ferry over to the other side of Lake Atitlan to a pueblo called Santiago. They visited a couple schools that other volunteers are working in and held a recycled art workshop with the kids. Much of the next two days were spent in the school system, teaching and observing.










On Thursday afternoon, the two groups met back at Corazon del Bosque and spent time watching the ecotourism group give presentations to workers at the park on solid waste management. During the evening we had a cultural exchange night with the Guatemaltecos and a big bonfire to end the night. The following morning we headed back to Santo Tomas, but not before Corby got some birdwatching in with the rest of the group. For those of you interested in birding- they spotted a Collared Trogon, an endemic species to Guatemala. It's nice to be back "home" again after a week of traveling. The upcoming week is filled with more classes at the training center and an eco-camp that we will be hosting at the end of the week.

Trip to Quiche

We just returned from a 4-day trip to the Quiche department of Guatemala, where we stayed in the village of Chicaman with two current Peace Corps volunteers (one of the other four married couples currently serving in Guatemala). The idea was for us to spend a bit of time getting to know how current volunteers live day to day.

Also, this was our first solo traveling experience without Peace Corps folks guiding us through the bus system. It was a long trip...3 hours to the capital of Quiche in a crowded "chicken bus" with a bus driver that got a huge grin every time he decided to pass another semi-truck around a blind corner and 100 km/hr. (People say these things are safe....) The next leg was supposed to be a 3 hour trip to the pueblo over a mostly rutted, mountainous dirt road; but it actually ended up being 2½ hours of a bus ride, 3½ hours of waiting for construction crews (part of which was their standard 2 hour lunch break), a half hour walk to speed up our passage through another construction zone, and eventually a ride in a vehicle from our new found friends on the other side.











The scenery and the culture were incredible. The pueblo was a Spanish speaking market town with 5 different Mayan Languages spoken in the surrounding "aldeas" (small communities surrounding the market towns.) We visited one of the incredible river valleys as well as the birthplace of Rigoberta Menchu, a Guatemalan-Nobel Peace Prize winner that has made a life out of fighting for the rights of indigenous people around the world.