Last Trip

We just took what may be our last trip around Guatemala a couple weeks ago. We were lucky enough to have Corby's brother, Jeremy visit us for 3 weeks. He just returned from a year long tour in Afghanistan and made time to come see us, which was great.



We spent some time traveling to new parts of Guatemala that we had not seen before, including Huehuetenango and Xela and up to Mexico for a couple days. We also managed to climb the 3rd highest volcano in Guatemala, Santa Maria.







Things are quickly coming to a close here and the time seems to be slipping away. We've finally made our trip plans home and after a small trip to Mexico City, we will be returning to Minneapolis on April 7th. Everything has slowly been falling into place and the most exciting news from last week was my acceptance to graduate school at the U of M. Starting in the fall, I will be working on my masters in social work. I'm really looking forward to a new challenge and it'll be great to get home.

The mix of emotions has already begun to set in about leaving Guatemala and we're looking forward to spending the next 3 weeks with our Salacuim family.

Laguna Lachuá National Park Brochure

It's been over a year in the making, several rough drafts and months waiting for funds, but finally the new park brochures are finished and should be printed soon. Even though Laguna Lachuá has been a national park for over 37 years, very few promotional materials exist. This may be one of the reasons it remains one of the least visited parks in all of Guatemala. We hope that by distributing brochures and posters to all the major travel agencies in the country, it will encourages some tourists to take the long journey to check out, what we would consider, one of the most beautiful areas in Guatemala.

Ecoregión Lachuá

Ecoregión Lachuá is where we work. Kari made this map as part of some new eco-tourism promotional material.

Trip to Chiapas, Mexico

We've been bogged down with work lately and feeling like our "Close of Service" date that is only about 6 months away is looming, as we're trying to complete various projects. I recently finished up a community tourism training class with a group young people from the neighboring town of Benpec el Castaño which had been keeping us tied down every Saturday for the last few months. We are also pushing to finish a construction project, where the local youth group (JAGUAR) is adding on a study space to their community library. We are in the thick of organizing the scholarship program for the school year that starts next January. Kari is busy with designing some eco-tourism promotional material and website improvements for the Laguna Lachuá National Park. Kari and Nicole have had a few meetings to try to create a young girls group to help promote leadership and self-esteem. Of course there are lots of other important community project ideas that have always been delayed, with the thought "we'll have more time for that later".

I'm also thinking about trying to soak up as much as I possibly can from our precious little remaining time....I've never taken the hike to Rocja Pomtila from Salacuim through the thick of the jungle, I haven't learned more than basic conversations in the Q'eqchi' language, we've never traveled to Xela on the other side of the country, I've only hiked up 1 of the 20 volcanoes higher than 2000 meters in Guatemala.

So, last weekend we made a quick get away to Chiapas, Mexico with our site mate Nicole. I had heard about a National Park called the Lagunas de Montebello that wasn't supposed to be very far from our site. We left early in the morning on Saturday and got to a town called Tziscáo in the afternoon. On the way we crossed the dusty, unmanned border crossing near the town of Ingenieros, Guatemala and spent the rest of the weekend wondering if anybody would check for a stamp in our passports. The Mexican side of the border greeted us with paved roads, a nearly empty micro-bus, and a semi-cautious driver (now that's what I call a developed country). The scenery was beautiful and we found a little cabin to stay at right next to a sweet little lake. Here are a few pictures from the trip....


Kari on one of the famous rafts made from the local cork trees.


View from 5 Lakes lookout


Kari and I at one of the lakes

Forsberg Family Vacation

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.


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.


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.


Tikal National Park

Salvador

One of the amazing things about being a Peace Corps Volunteer is being able to see the world. Not just where you serve, but all around you. We had a great trip to El Salvador last week. Beautiful beaches, friendly people and American dollars. It felt like home.



beauty



tranquility



solitude

Peace Corps Photographers

We take some snapshots of our ¨Peace Corps Experience¨ here in Guatemala. They are great memories and a few of them turn out really nice. However, there are some top notch P.C. photographers here and they are capturing images similar to what we see here but in a much more artistic and eye appealing way.

Check out these site if you want to see some good PC guatemala pictures--

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonathanmiller/




http://www.flickr.com/photos/43918028@N00/

Chicken Bus Photo Essay

The chicken buses are famous in Guatemala. These converted American school buses are the main form of transport around the country and are known for being so full that people hang out of the windows and doors. Check out this website for some more info and pictures.

Chicken Bus Page

Weekend in the City

Kari & I just returned to Salacuim after being in the City/Antigua area last week. We took a week long course from the Peace Corps to try to take our Spanish to another level. We took advantage of the trip to take in some Guatemala City culture over the weekend. Here are a few picures...


Kari and Chris at a National League Soccer Game


Kari at the National Palace


Us at the National Plaza


Kari at the Zoo

A brief...or not so brief update

A flood in our office at the end of November has taken us out of communication with the outside world until now. We finally have our internet back up and running and are excited to report all of our activities over the last 2 months.
Thanksgiving found us in the city awaiting the arrival of Kari's sister and her boyfriend. Our first visitors from the states! We did a jam packed tour of Guatemala with Katie and Kristoff, which included a couple days in Salacuim, a visit to Semuc Champey, Lake Atitlan, Antigua and the longest zipline in Central America. We were really grateful to be able to spend time with the two of them, especially around the holidays.





The beginning of December started off with us celebrating our 29th birthdays in Guatemala, as well as taking a road trip to Livingston and Tikal with our office before everyone left for Christmas vacation. With Christmas quickly approaching we headed to Antigua and spent Christmas Eve with our host family in Santo Tomas. We took part in their traditional celebration of mass at 11pm and dinner at midnight. The family of 40 stayed up until 5am celebrating. We were glad to have people that we consider good friends to spend the holidays with.



A couple days after Christmas we were fortunate to have our friends Tim and Julie pay us a visit as well. We took off for Honduras for a 5 day trip to the Bay Islands, where we enjoyed island life and New Years Eve on Utila. We ended our trip with a few days in Guatemala and enough time to take in Antigua, the market in Chichicastenango and a trip to Panajachel on Lake Atitlan.



The last couple months have been full of travel and time with family and friends, which we are so grateful for. It really is an amazing experience to have people come and see what we've been up to for the last year. The newly uploaded pictures say it all.

Maps of Our Area

We wanted to share a basic map of where our site is and where we're located in Guatemala. Aquí es.

Laguna Lachuá National Park

Laguna Lachuá National Park is one of the most pristine areas in Guatemala and also one of the least visited parks in Central America. Part of our goal is to work with the communities surrounding the park to help protect and conserve its resources. Below are some of our favorite pictures of the park.

Trip to the Alta Verapaz Area

We just returned from our second and last field based training. We were able to see a part of Guatemala that we had not yet explored. It was well worth the wait, as it is one of the most beautiful areas of the country by far. We started off on Monday toward Coban. The ecotourism group went to Chilasco, which is in the cloud forest. They took a hike to the largest waterfall in Central America, but unfortunately it wasn't a clear day so the view was not as expected. The environmental education group went straight to Coban to tour a candle making facility run buy the indigenous people and talk to some of the volunteers in the area. The two groups met up in the evening and spent the night in Coban, the third largest city in Guatemala.

Chilasco Cloud Forest











The next day we dropped down into a valley in the jungle and visited Lanquin, an absolutely beautiful town in the middle of nowhere. It was very warm and tropical, unlike where we are living now in the mountains. Kari's group visited a few schools in the area and gave a workshop to students that are studying to become teachers. They also did some small art projects with the kids of a small village school. Meanwhile, Corby's group worked on building some trails and making signage for the park in the area. The highlight was meeting up to take a trip to Semuc Champey and hike to some natural turquoise pools and take a swim for the afternoon. With all the work we've been doing, we have certainly found time to have fun as well.

visiting the Lanquin schools

The pools of Semuc Champey

We finished off our week with presentations and more school visits in Chisec. We also took in a tubing trip down the river. The final event of the week was an interview to determine our future sites. We feel like it is out of our hands at this point, but are eagerly awaiting Thursday, the 16th when we will know our fate for the next two years. We are excited to get out there on our own and work with the people of Guatemala. We have had some great opportunities to explore these past few months and are ready to employ our skills we have learned. We will post our site news as soon as we find out.

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.