August 31, 2007

The Stuff That Happens

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Last night Kari and our site mate Nicole were the judges in a mini beauty pageant in Salacuim. The event was aimed at selecting the "Novia del Ganadero", or the "Cattleman's Girlfriend" who will be involved in the upcoming rodeo in late September. The biggest highlight/lowlight of the afternoon was a toss-up between when the stage collapsed breaking a kid's leg, and when one contestant lost control of her galloping horse and almost trampled the crowd. The lowlights aren't really a laughing matter, but you can't help but see a general trend and compare/contrast to the States.

With about 7 months left before our scheduled return to "normal life", I've been thinking a lot lately about how precious every day of our experience down here is. I can't say that I enjoy the typical daily chaos I've learned to put up with: a shrieky blown-out speaker system pounding 20 feet from my desk on all day on a day when I had planned to catch up with computer work, or upsetting Kari with my inability to track and kill the huge spider with the egg-sack that had just climbed into her clean clothes pile, or the megaphone charged vehicles that decide to park on our street and blare presidential ads at 7am, or the holes in the office roof that send us running to cover everything up if a storm passes. (these are all events from today, except the spider which was yesterday)

But at the end of the day sometimes you just have to soak it all up and appreciate the experience as a whole, think about what a challenge you've overcome to adapt, cherish the soul-filling energy that comes with overpowering the daily obstacles, and be thankful for the stories that come with it.

Here are some more pictures from last night's event...

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The Judges



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The contestants

August 27, 2007

Children of the week

In about 2 months, students will be finishing up the school year in Salacuim. We have one final group of kids to highlight before the year is over; our other junior high group. They all attend a fairly new and private school in Salacuim. The classes are small and there are 3 teachers that switch off teaching different subjects. It's a little more structured than the telesecundaria and this will be the first year that they will graduate a class from the school. There is a lot of talk lately as to weather or not the school will be around next year. It was started up by a local family of teachers as another alternative to learning in Salacuim, but they are renting a building which will not be available next year and looking at a lot of costs that are keeping them down.

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name: Ofelia Xe age: 20 grade: 9th
favorite subject:
spanish favorite sport: basketball
future goal:
to be a teacher

Our town (or maybe Guatemala in general) has a reputation of making a lot of options for the same thing. Whether it's over 15 political parties on a ballot for president, 6 different churches of the same religion for our tiny town or 2 different junior highs, they like to divide rather than unite their efforts to make one outstanding system.

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name: Leobardo Pop age: 15 grade: 8th
favorite subject:
math favorite sport: soccer
future goal:
to own a business

This group of kids has presented a special challenge to us. Only by chance, within this group we are dealing with our only single teen mother, who is struggling to balance school and taking care of her child. We also have one girl who has lost her mother and lacks a female influence in a machismo society. The challenges have surfaced in terms of not having a sufficient elementary education to understand complicated junior high topics and the results have been low grades. For some reason we have had to push this group to excel more than others. They have all risen to the occasion though and we are hoping that this year will end in success for them.

<span class=
name: Narcy Ac age: 18 grade: 7th
favorite subject:
q'eqchi' (mayan language)
favorite sport:
soccer
future goal:
to be a teacher

<span class= <span class=
name: Ilce Choc age: 15 grade: 7th
favorite subject:
q'eqchi' (mayan language)
favorite sport:
basketball
future goal:
to be a nurse

Regardless of all the obstacles, they are all getting a second chance to succeed this year. An opportunity that would not have been there without outside donor support.

August 17, 2007

Forsberg Family Vacation

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Ruins of Quirigua

I grew up taking road trips across the country with my family. Every summer without fail we would load up the minivan and drive. Lately it's been more difficult to get everyone together and plan a big family trip. We all seem to be going in different directions, with different schedules. This year, the family came to us. For 10 days we experienced Guatemala and soaked up the culture and richness of the country together. For my parents, it was their first international trip and for Katie, who had already been here once and Mark, who had spent a month this summer studying in Honduras, it was still an adventure. We all saw things a little differently this time around. Even us, who have traveled this path many times over.

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Laguna Lachuá National Park

It was invaluable to have everyone come to our site and see what we have done since we arrived. It is one thing to email our stories, but another thing to experience them with us. At times, the steps seem immeasurable to us, but to see how we have changed and grown through someone else's eyes is refreshing. It was great to have them meet our neighbors and the kids that we spend time with. The individual students that they are sponsoring through the scholarship program, were all able to spend time with them and see that there is a real person on the other end that cares about what they are doing. It was a powerful interaction for the kids and my family.

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Meeting the scholarship kids they sponsor

Throughout the week and a half, we took in the sites of Antigua, Lake Atitlan, traveled to Salacuim and Laguna Lachuá, visited our host family in Santo Tomas, made the long drive up to Tikal National Park and spent a night in Rio Dulce. Every day was different and every day there was a new obstacle to overcome.
I really enjoyed watching the reactions to some of the things that we now consider fairly normal; a metal ladder leaning against an electrical line, a man climbing up the side of a bus to put something on top while it is moving down the highway, kids doing cartwheels at a stoplight for money and the lovely habit of throwing toilet paper in the wastebasket. It made me realize how much we have adapted in order not to notice these things and also how the readjustment back will be challenging.
This is a family trip that we will talk about forever. Whether it changed some viewpoints of those that came, or those that they met, it definitely impacted everyone in a different but important way.

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Tikal National Park