First Full Day

Today was a great day! We went to bed last night around 9:30pm because we were pretty exhausted. I am on the top bunk in our room, and it is actually pretty comfortable! The temperature was not too hot or cold. (Side note: The temperature in Antigua is actually perfect. It’s cool in the morning, and then gets warm in the afternoon. Right when it starts to feel a little hot, it gets cloudy and cools off again. There are also no mosquitos. Praise the Lord.) We woke up around 6:30am because our windows do not block out the noise of the streets, and cars start driving by loudly at that time. It also gets light around then too, which I am happy about because when I am waking up to go to class at 8am, it won’t be dark!

We met Paul and walked together to Parque de Central. The park is beautiful. We saw some girls getting their picture in front of a fountain, dressed in prom-like dresses, celebrating their quinceañeras. There were many people walking around selling headbands and necklaces, or offering to shine shoes. The park is surrounded by trees, providing refreshing shade, and restaurants and café’s border it.

We took a quick walking tour of part of Antigua on our way to El Tenedor, the biggest and most expensive hotel in Antigua. An shuttle arrived and we piled inside. The sides were open so we were able to dangle our feet out as we drove. The driver took us up into the mountains, driving fast and driving around more and more turns as we continued to ascend. The view was spectacular. As we got higher, we got a beautiful view of Antigua below, surrounded by mountains and volcanoes. The driver slowed so we could take pictures. After a short drive we made it up to the restaurant, owned by the family that also owns Pepsi, where we would be eating breakfast.

We ate a delicious breakfast buffet. Plantanos fritas (plantains), tortillas con queso, fresh fruit, bacon, and omelets were just a few of the options. We also had our first taste of coffee in Guatemala—it was definitely something I will be drinking a lot more of!

After breakfast we rode the shuttle took us back down to the hotel, and we continued our walking tour. We visited the market, and said ‘Hola’ or ‘buenas dias’ to everyone we passed. Everyone is so friendly! Just using tiny bits of Spanish is exciting. There is so much opportunity to speak it here! Even though I don’t know much, just being surrounded by Spanish speakers makes me want to try to speak as much as I can. When I was preparing for this trip, I thought I might be tempted to speak English, but since coming here I have only wanted to say as much as I am able to in Spanish. On our tour we also stopped at the McDonalds in Antigua…holy cow is it different than American McDonalds! It had a beautiful courtyard and a perfect view of the volcano. Libby, Paul’s assistant, bought us all coffee. I got a frappe dulce de leche. It was so good!

We had another delicious meal with Cindy. She made ensalada, torillas, y pasta con pollo (pasta with chicken) for lunch. So far, my stomach has been handling the food well! I have a pretty sensitive stomach, so I am hoping it stays that way and I am able to be careful with what I eat! After lunch we walked back to Paul’s and talked for a few hours about the history of Guatemala and what to expect from the culture today. It was super interesting. One thing that stuck out to me was the education in Guatemala. Not many people have the opportunity to receive an education (mostly women) because they simply cannot afford it-they have to pay for school supplies and a uniform, even though school is free, and most people choose to use that money to send boys to school rather than girls. I think it’d be really cool to raise money to buy school supplies to send girls and boys to school in Guatemala. There is a lot of the world that needs help, and although it is easy to think that there are simply too many problems in the world for us to solve, giving kids an education is one easy way to increase the amount of people with the ability to start solving those problems. Maybe we cannot physically fix everything, but we can surely equip others with the knowledge and skills to help.

We left Paul’s around 4pm and headed back to our home. Paul gave us each 100 Quetzals (about 13 U.S. dollars) for breakfast tomorrow! This will be our first opportunity to buy something for ourselves in Antigua!

A few of the other girls and I decided to go find the market, just to look around. It’s about a 10 minute walk from our home. The market was very interesting. 3-liter coke bottles were sold with a glass cup taped to the top that apparently came with it. The store had a lot of the stuff that we will probably need throughout the trip, all at reasonable prices, so that is reassuring to know! A lot of stuff that was sold was packaged very interestingly.  I like noticing all of the differences between Guatemala and the U.S. because it gives me the opportunity to practice not thinking that Guatemalan’s are doing everything ‘wrong’. It is easy I think for Americans to believe that everything we do is ‘right’, when in reality it’s all just different, and it offers really good learning experiences.  

One thing we learned right away is that something to expect from Guatemalan men is different forms of sexual harassment. Thankfully, it is mostly innocent catcalling or whistling. Today, we experienced our first instance of that. Two men rode by on a motorcycle and one turned around and whistled loudly. And then he rode away looking back at us, giggling! It was such a funny thing to me that all I could do was burst out laughing. We were told to just ignore it and not acknowledge the men if this ever happens, but the whole scene was just so silly to me. In the U.S., whenever someone has whistled at me it has been while driving by quickly in a car, and it was always so fast that I never saw who it was. I guess it was so funny to me here because they were so upfront with it, knowing that I was staring at them as they rode away, seeing exactly who had just whistled. And then the whole thing with him laughing hysterically at himself really made me laugh. It’s another interesting difference between the U.S. and Guatemala!

It is now 7pm and we are about to eat dinner with Cindy. Meals in Antigua are usually 7am-1pm-7pm. Although it feels like we’ve already eaten a lot, it has been pretty healthy foods and I am looking forward to trying new foods and still being pretty healthy these next few months!

The last thing that has really struck me as interesting on this trip is how normal it is for the girls and I to sit around and discuss Spanish. We spend a lot of our time sitting in the courtyard at home, talking to each other and then randomly asking how to say certain things in Spanish. We talk to the dog in Spanish, and Paul has a four year old grandson who visits and speaks to us in Spanish too. It is just so interesting that just by being here, and only for two days, we are already doing our best to learn little bits and pieces of Spanish, and it feels so normal to talk about what different words mean, or to say something in English and then discuss how it was supposed to be said in Spanish. The girls I am with are so encouraging with each other and we are all so eager to do well with learning this beautiful language.

This post is really long and most likely future posts will not come this often or be this long. I hope you enjoy keeping up with my days here in Antigua! I know I am enjoying living them!

-Kara

Parque de Central

Our view from breakfast

The Antigua McDonalds!