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.

Latest Activities

It´s been about 2 weeks since our last update.  We´ve kept a pretty busy schedule of training.  Spanish is coming along, but it seems slow...

 

Unfortunately, the highlight of the past two weeks was that we both came down with some sickness.  Probably some kind of bug that made for a miserable couple of days.  After expelling a large volume of bad stuff from our bodies, we´re both feeling strong and like we´ve paid our dues to live in the 3rd world.

 

We also made a trip to the capital to visit the Peace Corps Headquarters.  It was good to get a handle on how to safely move through the big city, but it´s not really a place that we´re all that excited about spending much time in.  Aside from a few recognizable American restaurants (that can be a sight for sore eyes at times) and a transportation hub, it doesn´t seem like there´s much of a reason for too many future visits.

 

A big trip to an pueblo near Coban is coming up this week.  After a 6 hour bus ride, we´ll spend Thursday-Sunday visiting another married couple working for the Peace Corps.  This is supposed to be our chance to job shadow and ask all the questions we have about what it´s like to be volunteers in the field.  The others in our training group are doing the same thing throughout the country.  We´re all very ready to break away from the classroom and see some country.

 

We´ve also spent a few days (last Sunday & today) in Antigua and have been using it as a break from the 3rd world living.  Today we visited an Art Exhibit that was organized by a PC volunteer in the Lake Atitlan area.  We also were able to visit with a relative that is spending a few months here to get away from the North Dakota winter.

We're here!

Well, we're here. It's been a busy few weeks between getting packed up, moved out, and orientated. Everything went great in our first week. We have a half of a day off today (Saturday) and a free day tomorrow as well, so we're just now getting a chance to relax a bit.

On Monday, we arrived in Washington DC pretty close to on time & had our "staging event" for a day and a half where we met our training group. Aside from packing a little bit too heavy, everything went smooth.

On Wednesday, we woke up at 2 am to get ready for our flight to Guatemala City. The flight was delayed a bit, but we still landed in the early afternoon. Folks from the Peace Corps were there waiting for us all & had a couple mini-buses/vans to drive us to the training site in Santa Lucia. It's pretty warm, probably upper 70s (although it did rain this morning). They have an amazing site here, a little oasis with clean green grass, clean bathrooms, hot showers, and decent internet access. It's where we'll be doing our training session for the next three months with the entire group.

Eventually, we loaded into the vans and got dropped off at out brand new "host family". We have a great family. They don't speak english at all, so our spanish is coming along pretty well-->but we have a long way to go(Corby more than Kari). It's amazing how easy it is to spend time with them and talk/play even though we can't communicate easily.

Since then, we've been sitting in lectures about staying healthy, safety, spanish, and technical skills. It looks like we'll be doing slightly different programs --> Kari: Environmental Education, Corby: Ecotourism.

Sounds like our host family may take us to Antigua tomorrow to have a look around. We'll be traveling together to visit the Volcano Pacaya with a fairly large group on Monday. Probably a short hike & a visit with a current volunteer doing ecotourism work there. It also sounds like quite a bit more traveling is on our way in the next few months during training...

That's basically the latest news. We'll write more later.

Reminder: there is a place to make comments on these posts if anyone has replies that they would like to post.

About to Leave

We've had a busy week moving out of our studio in St Paul. We're thankful for all the help that we had from family & friends to help us get out the door. This trip is within sight.

We've added a lot of pictures from the last few years to our photo site. Check it out at www.flickr.com/photos/corbylewis

FYI: We also have an address where we'll be able to recieve packages in Guatemala.

Peace Corps Director
c/o "Corby & Kari Lewis"
8 Calle 6-55, Zone 9
Guatemala City, 01009
Guatemala, Central America
Office Tel. # 502.2334.8263 (needed for courier packages)

Getting ready

Merry Christmas everyone!

Welcome to our brand new blog. If we haven't had a chance to give you the update, we've recently accepted an invitation to join the Peace Corps in Guatemala & are departing on January 9, 2006. We'll be working as part of the Environmental Conservation program.

Our schedule is to meet our group of new volunteers in Washington D.C. for a 2-3 day staging session where we'll be taking care of last minute paperwork, vaccinations and the like. From there it's on to a town called Santa Lucia for a 3 month crash course in Language, Culture, Trade Skills, and who knows what else.

In April we'll be official "volunteers" and be moving onto our assignment, most likely in a rural part of Guatemala. We don't yet have details of exactly where this will be.... It’s part of the adventure!

Although we're unsure of our access to traditional communication, we're going to make an effort to update this blog with our comings and goings throughout our trip. If you’re interested, you should be able to check this site out to keep up with us occasionally.

Feel free to leave messages for us on our "Tagboard" on the right, or by adding comments to the posts-->we'd like to keep up with all of you too!

Introductory Post

To get things started with a brand new blog, here are a few images of Kari & I within the last couple of years.

In Geneva, Switzerland

Us in Paris

Mount Blanc, Chamoix, France