A very nice Canadian girl wandered into the hotel today and decided she wanted to stay and do volunteer work at the restaurant. Although it will be tough for just any gringo to match my waitering skills, I guess the hotel backpackers has a sufficient amount of volunteers now for me to leave. I still technically ´owe´the hotel three more days of work at the restaurant, and they said i might have to pay that back at some later point (maybe semana santa - easter - which is a huge holiday week for guatemalans).
Just like that, as I was just settling into my digs here at the hotel, I´m off again on another adventure. I leave tomorrow morning to start my duties to the orphans, still not really knowing what I´ll be doing. I will miss the regulars at the bar - Jean Marie, the Belgain who lives on his boat here on Rio Dulce and speaks a great mix of Spanish, French, German - Otto Ernesto, the Guatemalan caballero who totes his pistol everywhere he goes and loves to drink his gallo cerveza mixed with V8 juice (not bad, I shared one with him, but nothing like a Karl Strauss Amber). I will miss the employees of the hotel who I´ve become close friends with. Jonatan, the cashier at the restaurant who loves Snoop Dog and DJ Tiesto and who´s got an amazingly funny accent when he tries to speak English - Daniel, the 17 year old kid who graduated from the orphanage and who now works in the kitchen. One of my first days here I fished with him using string a hook and tortilla and we caught a pretty decent sized guapote, even though we were going for some mojarra.
It feels weird becoming friends with these people only to leave so quickly. It somehow doesn´t really feel right. I want to be more than just a passerby with them. They feel like more than that to me. One thing that the majority of people that I´ve met have in common, no matter what backgrounds they have here, is that they would all drop everything to have the chance to live and work in the United States. I´m not sure how I feel about that yet...
I finally figured out how to post some pictures on the blog. There is a link to a slideshow of my first couple weeks abroad on the right of the blog page. My camera does some weird things sometimes, so don´t blame my photography skills. If anyone has a decent camera they would like to send my way, I´ll make it worth your while.
As they say in Freedonia, Oogy Wawa!
Chris
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Becoming Guatemalteco
Things are good here. i´ve gotten accustomed to working at the restaurant at this hotel. Its in a pretty beautiful spot. and although i didn´t come to be a server, its been cool getting to know the area, the employees that work here, and the tourists that pass through. plus my spanish is getting real good (my english a little worse). Some of the volunteers that I´ve talked to say that the worst part is working at the hotel, but I´ve quite enjoyed it. Work is like a really long Spanish class. And when I´m not at work, there really isn´t that much to do. The river is fun to swim in, and I´m almost done reading the biography of Che. I´ll be happy to finish that book and get it out of my backpack. It could probably fuel a fire for three days its so long. I´m also grateful to my brother for convincing me to bring a guitar at the last minute. Great call Jon.
Its been a little over a week since i´ve been here. pretty crazy. feels like longer. i took a tour of the orphanage yesterday. wow. its pretty cool. the kids seem awesome and i think its going to be pretty amazing being with them. i hadn´t been there even ten minutes and I was surrounded by beautiful little boys and girls wanting any sort of attention; to be picked up, talked do; swirled around, tossed the ball. I´m still not sure what i´ll be doing, but i think i might be an `orientador´ for the big boys (yrs. 11-16). that would mean i sleep with them, wake them up in the morning at five to do their chores and make sure they shower, and then send them off to school. then i´d hang with them from eleven to one while they eat lunch, and then after school for a bit before they go to bed. i´d have most of my day off, which would be give me time to explore the jungle, read, lay in a hammock, nap, read more, play the guitar, chase some chickens, and nap again, in that order. the boy´s house is actually pretty nice. way nicer living conditions than the volunteer house, where all the rest of the volunteers that teach classes sleep. it seems like it could be nice (its all relative really), but none of them take the effort to clean the rooms. so i´m kinda hoping that i do get that position to stay with the kids. There house is right on the river with some nice hammocks, and a rope swing off one of the decks!
it was a crazy experience just to be at an orphanage in guatemala, let alone one that i will be living at for the next couple months. I think it hit me while I was there that I´m in this for a little while, and so to try and get comfortable.
i did laundry by hand for the first time in my life today. It took a long time and was very tireing. I´m not very good at it, and I think I´ll end up ruining all my clothes I brought. I guess they smell better though. I think I´ll probably just wear as little clothes as possible and do laundry more often. I´ve never really thought about how much swish swashing work the washing machine is doing back home.
I also bought a pillow today, and a pillowcase. The pillow case was I think a little over 8 quetzales ($1.15) and the pillow maybe 24 quetzales. i´m really excited to replace the Iron Springs Brewery sweatshirt I´ve been using as a pillow for the past week with something that hopefully serves its purpose. Although I think the sweatshirt has been giving me good dreams about decent beer, something that doesn´t exist down here.
What else. For the past week I´ve been craving these tacos that are on the restaurant menu. Every time I try to ask for them though, they say they can´t make them, even on the days that the special is tacos. Today a guest at the restaurant didn´t eat their order of tacos, and as I bussed the dishes into the kitchen, I set them aside. They were an order of tacos chinos (eggrolls). I ate them later and they tasted so good (is that gross?) There was chicken inside, the first meat I´ve eaten here since a disasterous episode with a hamburger last Friday that ended up with; well, I´ll just stop there. And sure enough, not thirty minutes later, I was feeling sick. No breaks at this restaurant with the meat I guess. On the good side though, I bought some peanut butter and jelly and bread at the store in town and am having some decent lunches. My six or so choices of free meals on the restaurant menu (not including meat choices, which i don´t even look at anymore) are getting a little old, to say the least, so the pb and j is a good mix. plus, living in a land where you can get three avocados for about a buck is like heaven on earth to me. i´ve taken lots of pictures, and promise to send them soon.
The orphanage could use more volunteers if anyone is interested in quitting their jobs and moving to guatemala... but that´s just a crazy idea.
chris
Its been a little over a week since i´ve been here. pretty crazy. feels like longer. i took a tour of the orphanage yesterday. wow. its pretty cool. the kids seem awesome and i think its going to be pretty amazing being with them. i hadn´t been there even ten minutes and I was surrounded by beautiful little boys and girls wanting any sort of attention; to be picked up, talked do; swirled around, tossed the ball. I´m still not sure what i´ll be doing, but i think i might be an `orientador´ for the big boys (yrs. 11-16). that would mean i sleep with them, wake them up in the morning at five to do their chores and make sure they shower, and then send them off to school. then i´d hang with them from eleven to one while they eat lunch, and then after school for a bit before they go to bed. i´d have most of my day off, which would be give me time to explore the jungle, read, lay in a hammock, nap, read more, play the guitar, chase some chickens, and nap again, in that order. the boy´s house is actually pretty nice. way nicer living conditions than the volunteer house, where all the rest of the volunteers that teach classes sleep. it seems like it could be nice (its all relative really), but none of them take the effort to clean the rooms. so i´m kinda hoping that i do get that position to stay with the kids. There house is right on the river with some nice hammocks, and a rope swing off one of the decks!
it was a crazy experience just to be at an orphanage in guatemala, let alone one that i will be living at for the next couple months. I think it hit me while I was there that I´m in this for a little while, and so to try and get comfortable.
i did laundry by hand for the first time in my life today. It took a long time and was very tireing. I´m not very good at it, and I think I´ll end up ruining all my clothes I brought. I guess they smell better though. I think I´ll probably just wear as little clothes as possible and do laundry more often. I´ve never really thought about how much swish swashing work the washing machine is doing back home.
I also bought a pillow today, and a pillowcase. The pillow case was I think a little over 8 quetzales ($1.15) and the pillow maybe 24 quetzales. i´m really excited to replace the Iron Springs Brewery sweatshirt I´ve been using as a pillow for the past week with something that hopefully serves its purpose. Although I think the sweatshirt has been giving me good dreams about decent beer, something that doesn´t exist down here.
What else. For the past week I´ve been craving these tacos that are on the restaurant menu. Every time I try to ask for them though, they say they can´t make them, even on the days that the special is tacos. Today a guest at the restaurant didn´t eat their order of tacos, and as I bussed the dishes into the kitchen, I set them aside. They were an order of tacos chinos (eggrolls). I ate them later and they tasted so good (is that gross?) There was chicken inside, the first meat I´ve eaten here since a disasterous episode with a hamburger last Friday that ended up with; well, I´ll just stop there. And sure enough, not thirty minutes later, I was feeling sick. No breaks at this restaurant with the meat I guess. On the good side though, I bought some peanut butter and jelly and bread at the store in town and am having some decent lunches. My six or so choices of free meals on the restaurant menu (not including meat choices, which i don´t even look at anymore) are getting a little old, to say the least, so the pb and j is a good mix. plus, living in a land where you can get three avocados for about a buck is like heaven on earth to me. i´ve taken lots of pictures, and promise to send them soon.
The orphanage could use more volunteers if anyone is interested in quitting their jobs and moving to guatemala... but that´s just a crazy idea.
chris
Friday, February 13, 2009
The First Couple Days...
Hello good people:
I write to you from Hotel Backpackers, a little hostel/restaurant located right on the Rio Dulce, Guatemala.
After a fun weekend visiting my pal and old college roommate Frank in Tampa Bay, I took a shuttle to Miami, and caught about a two and a half hour flight to Guatemala City on Tuesday, Feb. 10. As we approached the city, I was able to look out the window and see the steep mountains and hills cut by ravines that separated the valley that the city lies in from the rest of the country. Apart from the landscape, I noticed the small clusters of small houses with tin roofs that adorned the tops of these little mesas, and realized that surely this was not a dream and indeed I was in another country. I´ll tell you, there is nothing like flying into a third world country not really knowing the language and having heard multitudes of scary stories to get the heart pumping and create some anxiety and nervousness. This is how I felt as I stepped out of the airport and onto the street, only to be greeted by some 50 odd Guatemalans yelling at me in Spanish. Its amazing what Spanish I did know but had forgotten comes back to you in a moment like this, as survival instincts kick in.
A taxi driver convinced me (without much of a fight) that I didn´t want to stay in Guatemala City that night, but at a place he knew of which was on the outskirts and much safer. I agreed, and the place he took me ended up being a little house of a Guatemalan couple that rent out a couple of their rooms to guests. It was a lot pricier than I would have liked, but being tired, and feeling secure where I was, I let it go and felt accomplished that I´d actually made it somewhere for the first night. The couple ended up being very nice and I ended up talking with them in their living room for three or four hours that night about Guatemala, its people, its history, and its culture. The next morning he dropped me off at the bus station in the city and I made it just in time to catch the bus for a five hour bus ride north east to Rio Dulce.
After the bus dropped me off, I had to walk back south across the bridge that spans Rio Dulce, the longest and most famous bridge in Central America, and at that point I felt like I was in paradise. Both sides of the river were covered with tropical trees and plants and sparce huts and hotels with thatch roofs adorned the shores. Crossing the bridge to its east side, and looking south, I saw the Hotel Backpackers standing on piers stilts above the water. It looked exactly like what I´d seen on the website, and I couldn´t believe I´d actually made it here, so far away from home. As I walked onto the dock of the reception area, I checked out what would be my digs for the next two weeks...
After filling out some paperwork, I was greeted by another volunteer from Chicago, who had arrived about two weeks prior, and was just fulfilling her last days in the hotel. All the volunteers staying at the hotel share a room with about four or five small bunks. While I´ve been here, its just been her and I, but the occasional random volunteer will come back from their ´descanso´, or break, and stay there before they return to the orphanage. I grabbed a bunk and dropped my things and went down to the restaurant. The hotel is comprised of the restaurant, which is on a dock with about twenty tables, and big buildings, which are accessed by walking around these docks. In the main building is the reception area, public bathrooms and a kitchen on the main floor, some multi bunk rooms and one or two private rooms on the second floor, and the volunteer room on the third floor. Our room is directly above the kitchen, and if the aromas from the kitchen don´t wake you up, the calls from the birds outside in the area around the hotel surely will, quite early. Compared I´m sure to most rooms in Guatemala, ours is comfortable. It is not luxurious in the least, and clean is a word I will just have to forget about for the time being. People who can´t stand bugs or spiders or dirt in their room should not come here.
I will work here, in the restaurant, as a server for the next two weeks. I don´t know exactly why they make volunteers due this. Its almost as if we have to pay our dues, but I figure just be volunteering we are already paying our dues. At any rate, its not a bad place to work, and although I haven´t spent too much time here yet (I´ve only worked one day: the 3-10 shift last night) I don´t think it will be too bad. I didn´t come to be a server though, and its pretty hard trying to be a server to the natives, but my Spanish has progressed immensely already only being here two days. You see the employees every day, and its been interesting developing relationships with them, and then there are the backpackers and tourists, and then there are the locals who are regulars. Last night after work I was invited to have some beers with three local vaqueros sitting at a table in the restaurant. One of them spoke some English that he had learned twenty years back and wanted to be friends. One of the guys owned a huge amount of land in the area and claimed to have the biggest cow ranch in Guatemala. Judging by the size of their pistols hanging off of their waists, I figured it might be true, and didn´t want to question that claim at any rate. Not to worry, he said it was an organic farm, and the cows had plenty of space to roam.
I have a feeling I might grow a little tired of this place sooner rather than later, as I surely did not come to Guatemala to work in a restaurant, even as laid back as it is. But talking to the other volunteers who come by from the orphanage, I have several words of wisdom to live by:
1. Enjoy electricity while I can
2-buy some extra food to store while at the orphanage if I want to eat anything besides beans and rice three times a day
3. Be patient while I´m here, because my time will come soon enough to work with the kids and it will be very rewarding and
4. don´t eat the meat at the restaurant.
And so here I am. I think I´ll try and visit the nearby towns today. Its getting a little tiresome being in the same place that I sleep, eat, and work. Some new scenery would be nice. I can also take a kayak down the river...
I write to you from Hotel Backpackers, a little hostel/restaurant located right on the Rio Dulce, Guatemala.
After a fun weekend visiting my pal and old college roommate Frank in Tampa Bay, I took a shuttle to Miami, and caught about a two and a half hour flight to Guatemala City on Tuesday, Feb. 10. As we approached the city, I was able to look out the window and see the steep mountains and hills cut by ravines that separated the valley that the city lies in from the rest of the country. Apart from the landscape, I noticed the small clusters of small houses with tin roofs that adorned the tops of these little mesas, and realized that surely this was not a dream and indeed I was in another country. I´ll tell you, there is nothing like flying into a third world country not really knowing the language and having heard multitudes of scary stories to get the heart pumping and create some anxiety and nervousness. This is how I felt as I stepped out of the airport and onto the street, only to be greeted by some 50 odd Guatemalans yelling at me in Spanish. Its amazing what Spanish I did know but had forgotten comes back to you in a moment like this, as survival instincts kick in.
A taxi driver convinced me (without much of a fight) that I didn´t want to stay in Guatemala City that night, but at a place he knew of which was on the outskirts and much safer. I agreed, and the place he took me ended up being a little house of a Guatemalan couple that rent out a couple of their rooms to guests. It was a lot pricier than I would have liked, but being tired, and feeling secure where I was, I let it go and felt accomplished that I´d actually made it somewhere for the first night. The couple ended up being very nice and I ended up talking with them in their living room for three or four hours that night about Guatemala, its people, its history, and its culture. The next morning he dropped me off at the bus station in the city and I made it just in time to catch the bus for a five hour bus ride north east to Rio Dulce.
After the bus dropped me off, I had to walk back south across the bridge that spans Rio Dulce, the longest and most famous bridge in Central America, and at that point I felt like I was in paradise. Both sides of the river were covered with tropical trees and plants and sparce huts and hotels with thatch roofs adorned the shores. Crossing the bridge to its east side, and looking south, I saw the Hotel Backpackers standing on piers stilts above the water. It looked exactly like what I´d seen on the website, and I couldn´t believe I´d actually made it here, so far away from home. As I walked onto the dock of the reception area, I checked out what would be my digs for the next two weeks...
After filling out some paperwork, I was greeted by another volunteer from Chicago, who had arrived about two weeks prior, and was just fulfilling her last days in the hotel. All the volunteers staying at the hotel share a room with about four or five small bunks. While I´ve been here, its just been her and I, but the occasional random volunteer will come back from their ´descanso´, or break, and stay there before they return to the orphanage. I grabbed a bunk and dropped my things and went down to the restaurant. The hotel is comprised of the restaurant, which is on a dock with about twenty tables, and big buildings, which are accessed by walking around these docks. In the main building is the reception area, public bathrooms and a kitchen on the main floor, some multi bunk rooms and one or two private rooms on the second floor, and the volunteer room on the third floor. Our room is directly above the kitchen, and if the aromas from the kitchen don´t wake you up, the calls from the birds outside in the area around the hotel surely will, quite early. Compared I´m sure to most rooms in Guatemala, ours is comfortable. It is not luxurious in the least, and clean is a word I will just have to forget about for the time being. People who can´t stand bugs or spiders or dirt in their room should not come here.
I will work here, in the restaurant, as a server for the next two weeks. I don´t know exactly why they make volunteers due this. Its almost as if we have to pay our dues, but I figure just be volunteering we are already paying our dues. At any rate, its not a bad place to work, and although I haven´t spent too much time here yet (I´ve only worked one day: the 3-10 shift last night) I don´t think it will be too bad. I didn´t come to be a server though, and its pretty hard trying to be a server to the natives, but my Spanish has progressed immensely already only being here two days. You see the employees every day, and its been interesting developing relationships with them, and then there are the backpackers and tourists, and then there are the locals who are regulars. Last night after work I was invited to have some beers with three local vaqueros sitting at a table in the restaurant. One of them spoke some English that he had learned twenty years back and wanted to be friends. One of the guys owned a huge amount of land in the area and claimed to have the biggest cow ranch in Guatemala. Judging by the size of their pistols hanging off of their waists, I figured it might be true, and didn´t want to question that claim at any rate. Not to worry, he said it was an organic farm, and the cows had plenty of space to roam.
I have a feeling I might grow a little tired of this place sooner rather than later, as I surely did not come to Guatemala to work in a restaurant, even as laid back as it is. But talking to the other volunteers who come by from the orphanage, I have several words of wisdom to live by:
1. Enjoy electricity while I can
2-buy some extra food to store while at the orphanage if I want to eat anything besides beans and rice three times a day
3. Be patient while I´m here, because my time will come soon enough to work with the kids and it will be very rewarding and
4. don´t eat the meat at the restaurant.
And so here I am. I think I´ll try and visit the nearby towns today. Its getting a little tiresome being in the same place that I sleep, eat, and work. Some new scenery would be nice. I can also take a kayak down the river...
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