Instead of A Résumé

Mixco Viejo Kakchikel Fortress Ruins

Someday someone is going to have a stack of résumés on a desk. He or she’ll pick up mine early one morning or late one night when he or she really wants to pick up coffee instead. This person will read the frame of my professional life and try to surmise if I’m worth the interview. Let’s say that I am, for the sake of the argument. When I get called into an interview and maybe my hair’s still a little wet from my morning shower and I’m wearing a suit I only pull out a few times a year, I’ll sit in front of this person with my shoulders pushed back—because I’ll have reminded myself that good posture is supposed to be a good sign. This person will ask me what makes me qualified and prepared for the job. My whole body will want my mouth to say, “Guatemala,” hoping that just that word will transfer all my knowledge and experience into this person’s mind The Giver style.

“The Giver”-Style

My second urge will be to ask this person to read my personal travel diary even though it’s in Spanish—a next best option for explaining how this summer abroad has changed my life. The truth is, some of the things that give us the best preparation for a path in life, including a career, are often too gigantic to synthesize into a 12-point, Times New Roman, single-spaced blurb. Even if I say this summer has changed my life, I wonder if that’ll mean anything to the person who interviews me. If it didn’t, I wouldn’t blame that person. See, the thing is, when every adult in my life said to me before I left, “You’ll have the time of your life,” it’s not that I didn’t believe them—I just didn’t understand them. How could I? We throw absolutes and hyperboles around so much that we don’t realize how much meaning we strip away every time we use “life-changing” to describe our pizza, a new album, or a newly discovered bookstore. Let me jump off this train back to my point. For half of my life, I’ve wanted to be a teacher and a writer. I’ve made it my ambition in life to work as hard as I can to do both jobs well someday. Three years ago, after tutoring ESL students every day after school for a semester, I knew I wanted to work with English language learners, so I stopped cramming for Spanish vocab quizzes and started asking about the more intricate grammar. Two years ago when I took my first Latin American History course, I also knew that I wanted to write about Guatemala, a country with a history that so painful that it floods the land’s beauty with blood like dye in water. Studying and spending my summer in Guatemala has brought my dreams closer within my reach.

Mis padres de Guatemala

In Guatemala, I’ve learned what it means to be a language learner. My Spanish, although not perfect, has improved faster than a student athlete on steroids. But man, has it been a hard go of it. It’s not just a matter of learning the conjugations, idioms, and sentence structures. It’s not even as simple as using them in regular conversation. It comes down to this: when you’re nervous and flustered at the post office, on a tour, when your schedule changes, or when you’re so lost that you duck into a “Chicken Champion” chain restaurant just to ask directions, can you convey what you mean like a normal human being? Now while I can’t assume the ontological position of (all of the conditions of) an English language learner, I can grasp a heck of a lot better their challenges. I know how scary it is when you don’t have time to strategize sentences strung together in your head. I know what it’s like to struggle with a grammatical structure that absolutely doesn’t exist in your native language. It’s difficult when you concentrate all your energy on just understanding and you have none left over to create a thoughtful response—and I know how it feels when someone mistakes that for disinterest. Worse, I know the sense of helplessness when you realize instantly that you’ve just made a grammatical error and there’s no time for you to let the native speaker you’re with know that you know the correct form without stalling life—but you wish like crazy you could let them know you know.

A Guatemala Ciudad

Living in Guatemala, even for a sneeze-worth of time, has taught me what real poverty and terror can look like for a lot of folks. Frankly, I don’t even like to talk about it too much when my audience can’t see my eyes and know for certain that I’m not bluffing or speaking glibly. Because in addition to these conditions, I’ve seen in Guatemala what it means to enjoy and succeed in life. I’ve seen what it means to have dozens on dozens of different cultures crammed into one environment, and what it actually means to coexist.

Las chicas de la mañana a Los Patojos

Chicos de la tarde de Los Patojos

At my internship at Los Patojos, an alternative school full of love, creativity, excellence, and bossness, I’ve learned what it means to invest in your students as much as you wish to be invested in, to work long hours, plan lessons and then roll with it when plans change, and to collectively find a great idea and run with it while laughing your eyeballs off. My readings, lectures, and class discussions have taught me the intricacies behind culture and fighting against systemic oppression. In a phrase, from Guatemala I’ve learned how to respect what’s different without making a scene and then to keep working for a better world. All of this and more, I’m sure, will help me as I work as an English or History teacher in a Latino community. Maybe I won’t know a Dominican accent that well, the details of a small regional culture from Ecuador, or the exact chain of events in Mexican history. Still. This trip has made me aware enough to be on the look out so that I can learn.

Lago Atitlán

And as far as writing goes, as kids say these days, the ideas are literally everywhere (no figurative meaning for that “literally”). The mountains look like sleeping dinosaurs covered in moss, the fog floats around the highlands like a sea of clouds, the lakes seem like massive craters in the moon filled with water, and the people have more passion to work for a better Guatemala than any metaphor could explain. The historical, political, sociological, and emotional knowledge I’ve gained has given me what I needed as I write my creative thesis (and hopefully someday novel) about Guatemala—things like jokes, facts so unknown to outsiders that you could never Google them, and belief systems that I’d never learn at my home library in Pennsylvania.

Cerro de La Cruz en Antigua

In Guatemala, my life has changed and certainly for the better. I think of my professors and teachers who gave me a boost to where I am now, and I know that whenever I see each of them, I’ll have an uncontainable grin as tell them, “I learned so much,” and I know they’ll understand. I know they’ll grin and nod back at me because more than anything, Guatemala’s taught me how to be a grown-up. More than once I’ve realized that I’m not on some guided tour through life anymore with snacks and hugs provided by adults with nametags—rather I’m on the precipice of having to be an autonomous human being that has to participate in the world without a provided prompt.

Dos Mundos Reúnen encima de las ruínas

A thousand points if you figure out a way to convey that all with sincerity and passion in a 12-point, Times New Roman, single-spaced blurb, because this is one for the books.

Fill Me Up

How do I put this? I’m sorry, please give me a minute to pick up my words. I cut my mind on some sharp thoughts earlier. When you have a day like I had, it’s hard to make sentences do what you want. My heart is so full right now that it’s overflowing into my throat, making it hard to breathe or speak. But I’d like to share my Wednesday with you. bear with me.

(A little before) 8:00 a.m. I arrive at Los Patojos. If you didn’t already know from a few blogs ago, it’s what I hope heaven’s like. Everything is colorful and the murals on the wall all at once reassure you that in here everything is okay because it all belongs to the kids.

Justicia: El Mascota de Los Patojos

Justicia, the stray dog that the kids adopted when she was an abandoned puppy in a plastic bag thrown over a wall, sleeps on the turf in the warm sun as little bodies in bright smiles and small sneakers run around her. That endorphin-giving laugh that little kids have, the one that sounds like tiny Christmas bells, mixes with a song with a pulsing beat. After saying hi to some familiar faces, I walk to the classroom with my friends who are also working at Los Patojos with me. I’m relieved to see Mauricio, a Los Patojos grad around our age who always helps us out when our final straws of Spanish fail with the kids. Let me say a quick word about Mauricio: he is the guy that the kids look up to, the one who learned English almost on his own in three months, the one who always has a smile, joke, and a ready-to-help mindset. Without him, we’d feel a whole lot more lost and anxious.

We start setting up the pencils, paper, crayons, markers, glue, and music. As our five morning kids run in towards us with hugs, my heart fills up and I forget how tired I had been when my alarm went off that morning.

“Buenos días, chicos! ¿Qué pasa? ¿Como fueron sus semanas pasadas?” (Morning, kids! What’s up? How were your past weeks?) I got the normal range of unrevealing “bien,” “divertido,” and “aburrido” (good, fun, boring). No one said more than that and I didn’t ask more. “Bueno, hoy el tema es ‘¿Quienes son?’” (Okay, today the theme is “who are you?”)

~~Let me explain this real fast and then get back to the kids: At Los Patojos, as interns we had to come with a creative project to do with the kids. My friend Zazil is creating a garden with some of the kids. As it happens, I’m scared of worms. I also stink at drawing and can only fake playing piano with chords just like my Dad. So what could I do? Well, (hopefully you think so) I can write. And this past year I published a children’s book called Madam President: Five Women Who Paved the Way with my co-author and Associate Dean at my Schreyer Honors College Dr. Nichola Gutgold through Eifrig Publishing House. So about a month ago in the middle of our orientation to Guatemala, I had an idea: help the kids write poetry and stories about themselves, Los Patojos, fictional characters, and whatever else are some of their favorite things and then see if we can’t get it published bilingually. With a little help from my friends (10 points if you know that song), that idea grew into including art projects of the kids and the work of the youth of Los Patojos. Each week we have a different theme. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.~~

I cue up the song we’re going to listen to, “Soy de Zacapa,” to talk about how songs are a kind of poetry and to introduce the idea of Where I’m From Poetry. After examining the song with the kids, we play La Estatua, which we gringos might know as musical freeze dance. We take a break while the kids go to eat their breakfasts. Another group of grown ups tours the place, which catches my attention, but the kids could hardly notice. After all, this is their fantasy world, and those strangers are just passing through.

9:30 a.m. Then the first batch of magic happens: the kids write their poems. For some it’s easier than others, but each takes their own spin on the task. As always, they hand me their papers as fast as they finish like old-style reporters on a deadline and watch as my face lights up. If you’ve ever read poems of kids before, maybe you can understand how I felt. You’d think it’d be simple, and in a way it is. But there was a startling beauty, flair, and complexity in their poetry’s “simplicity,” just like always. I can’t say “muy bien” and “bueno trabajo” enough.

After that we take another quick break, during which I swap more U.S. hand games like Rock-Paper-Scissors and Concentration 64 for Guatemalan ones like Zip-Zip-Zip with the kids. They are patient with me as I try my best to learn the motions and the rhymes, never getting frustrated or disinterested.

I run to the front office to grab more paper and colored pencils, and end up talking to Veronica, the principal of the school. She reminds me of a brilliant, warm mother ready with a smile and a clipboard of inspiring ideas. I tell her that I’m a little nervous and that when I’m nervous, my grammar (I’m talking about you, masculine and feminine pronouns) worsens. She reassures me that my Spanish is solid and gives me the energy to dash back to class instead of walk.

10:15 a.m. My friend Aiza works the second round of magic. She explains how they’ll make self-portraits by drawing the facial features on small squares of paper and then assembling them. Again, each kid takes a different route with this project. Some have their eyes cloed, some partially opened, and some with downward-facing eyebrows overhead. Some of the faces take up the whole paper while others are small. Some have plain shirts, and some have rainbow-colored ones. And combined with their words and their mannerisms, from these I can start to see who these kids are.When they finish their self-portraits, they ask for more paper. They still have another forty-five minutes with us, and they’re itching to show us their hearts. We have free draw time, and the unscripted beauty of their minds relaxes.

12:00 p.m. We said goodbye to our morning bunch and welcome our second group: all boys. Set aside every stereotype you could possibly have about working with five pre-teen boys on poetry and art.

These boys laughed as we freeze danced together, concentrated on writing down their souls, and looked at me with hope and a need for love just as much as the girls and boys of the morning. I marveled at them, and tried to hide how shocked and amazed I felt when they looked up at me from their papers. Here were these strong boys, who could easily scoff at me and walk out of the room, but instead they rolled up the sleeves of their hoodies and sat cross-legged on the floor to write and draw. Talk about fearless. Meanwhile, one of the sweet boys from the morning dashes over near our room to wave and smile at us throughout the afternoon. Whenever I can spare the time from the group, I go over and ask him how he is and give him a hug.

1:30 p.m. Aiza, Alessondra, and I rest our bodies against chairs or walls for life-support during lunch. Teaching will tire you out more than any workout—I’m not kidding (teachers, 20 points if you can back me up on this). We eat and pray for more energy. I trudge to the bathroom, but on the way there, a four-year-old little girl approaches me and asks me my name. Within a minute, she and I are playing. It doesn’t matter to her that she’s never met me before because she knows that everyone in Los Patojos is love in action, and it doesn’t matter to me that I was going to splash water on my face for the same reason. After a few minutes, she scampers back to her class and waving goodbye. Her happiness and lack of fear boggle me. She’s like a something out of a Pixar movie, a little fairy of curly brown hair and laughter waiting to be picked up and hugged. My heart fills up a lot more, and she was just a filling it for a few minutes.

2:00 p.m. Again, the boys take the art project in a new direction. Some cut out their faces. Some draw thick necks. I can’t believe how incredible they are at art. One of them draws partially red eyes and a red mouth, and it looks like a Picasso. Their magic manifests as they all giggle as they draw a different kind of moustache. Sure it’s a self-portrait and there’s not one of them over thirteen but maybe the different moustaches reveal something about what’s inside, their personality, who they want to be, or even just that they wanted to have fun. I’ll accept all of the above as acceptable.

 

3:00 p.m. The boys finish and free draw, staring at encyclopedia picture books of sea creatures and far-away countries for inspiration before turning to their papers and maneuvering their pencils better than I ever will.

3:20 p.m. They say goodbye and smile with excited and hopeful eyes when I say see you next Wednesday. The sweet boy from the morning is still there and gives me another hug. I hear Bruno Mars playing from a stereo and I start dancing, making the fourth scoop of magic. A few kids come over and smile at me. At first when I ask them to dance too, they giggle and retreat to the wall. But after making it clear that I don’t mind looking like a dancing fool and asking them again, we’re all dancing. Of course it’s silly, but it’s also a beautiful mix as two cultures teach each other new moves and forget how much those two cultures have fought in the past. We danced the tango, two-step, meringue, head-banging, krump, bachata, shopping cart, reggae, disco point, break-dance, salsa, and club fist-pump jumping. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier. My heart feels full.

I say goodbye as these final kids head home, promising to see them on the following Wednesday. I give one more hug to the sweet boy.

3:55 p.m. I walk into the back office with Aiza and Alessondra to find Juan Pablo, the rad genius director and founder of Los Patojos. He’s had a long day and has a long night ahead as he works on three newspaper articles he has to submit in a few hours and prepares for the youth to come at night. But he takes a minute to tell us the stories and backgrounds of some of the kids we work with, including the sweet boy. I’m not going to share their stories with you for the same reason I won’t share their names: it’s not my place tell or your business to know the personal details of elementary school kids anywhere. But let me tell you this: those kids must be made of titanium. I want to punch a wall, cry, hug them all again, and seal their hearts with protective covers. I can’t tell if my heart is stretching to hold all that this place is filling it with or if my heart is just leaking. Either way, it hurts a little.

4:15 p.m. We finished talking to Juan Pablo, somehow feeling optimistic and full again. He does that–make people feel full with love and inspiration. The taxi arrives to take my friends and me back to Antigua. We’ve still got dinner and miles of homework to go before we sleep.

If you’re reading this to see what’s the take-away about these kids, here it is: they were more extraordinary in a day than most people are in years. These kids have a resilient and passionate desire to change their lives and country—and their average age is ten and a half years old. They might be a world away from you, but I’d advise that you watch as they change that world. These kids keep living when I think I’d refuse to get out of bed. They make food, jokes, homes, friends, families, masterpieces, and plenty else with what they have just like us. Please, please remember that we have more in common than we have separate. Because here’s the truth: these people aren’t victims whom we should pity from our positions of comfort but rather are humans just like you, your best friend, your coworker, in your class, and everyone else in your memory. Treat them like humans by acknowledging all of the good and bad, and trying to help them as your global neighbors (Yep, I’m talking about social, political, and economic support. **Disclaimer: We have to listen to what our global neighbors are saying they need in terms of these support systems instead of assuming or imposing “needs” on to them to fulfill our own agenda.**).

If you’re reading this to see what’s the take-away about me and my trip, here it is: This is what a lot of my days are like here in Guatemala. My days are rather beautiful, emotional, physically-exhausting, and intense. I absolutely, head-over-heels, talk-about-it-all-the-time love studying and working here in Guatemala. Granted, a volcano of political revolution just erupted out in the open after decades, and really centuries, of corruption and oppression. And there’s poverty right next to luxury. And the kids in the dream school live nightmares outside of it. But I love being here in the midst of these paradoxes and finding truths.

 

I like my long days here. Where I’m from, people try to hide their bad and usually ending up dulling their good right along with it. But these paradoxes are the embodiment of humanity, and to deny them means to forget a little what it means to be an empathetic, interpreting human and what it means to treat others like that. In Guatemala, the divine and despicable manifest all at once, and I’ve never felt so alive or so full.

A Star-Spangled, One in a Millennia Opportunity

Fuegos Artificiales en Antigua

Happy Fourth of July!! (And a belated Happy Second of July to my Dad, who always loves to remind me that the assembly actually voted on the Declaration of Independence on the two days before our beloved national holiday.)

In the spirit of freedom and democracy, I’d like to tell you about how right now  Guatemala is fighting for its own. I’ve been rather silent up until now about politics, which maybe you know is strange for me. Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard me passionately discussing/monologuing about some political or social issue. (Ten points if you raised your hand, twenty if you raised both. By the way, sorry about that.)  Here’s why.

When I came to Guatemala, I knew only the vaguest outlines of current events. As I heard words like “La Linea,” “Baldetti,” “customs fraud,” “La Cofradía,” and plenty of others for the first time, I felt much like I had two years ago when I first learned about Guatemala’s history. An alarming fear that I knew absolutely nothing washed over me like hot steam while the facts—though sometimes hard to follow—broke my heart. All I wanted was to know more. When the groundbreaking events are still happening, as is the case for Guatemala right now, there is no Wikipedia page. It is not like a detached historical analysis process in which you can run your finger chronologically over the course of events and color-code the various opinion pages without much sweat. I have had to listen to the rhetoric and inflection of my professors, my host parents, strangers who were kind enough to indulge my questions, and newspapers. I have had to do my own analysis and for the first time in my life, there was no supervisor to tell me if my interpretations of the interpretations was correct or not, which terrified me. On top of that mountain of facts, I have had to figure out my “place” in Guatemala (for you Liberal Arts majors out there, I’m talking about my ontological place). Never in my life have I not understood what is my socio-economic, political, and ontological role in my surroundings. At home I understand what it means to be a lower-middle class, white, English-speaking, Christian, female college student from Chester County, Pennsylvania in relation to my fellow Americans. I also know what that meaning then allows me to say and do about practically anything, from race relations to interacting with a stranger at a gas station. In Guatemala, I struggle to understand my position relative to others and to other events. I’ve been afraid to participate in larger political discussions because I feel like that kid who didn’t do the assigned reading before class and who had to catch up. And for a while, my fear that I might say something when it wasn’t my place to do so kept me silent too. But here’s what I’ve come to hold onto: I do not know what it’s like to be an oppressed Guatemalan of any social class or racial group, but I am not comfortable living in a world in which I know there are oppressed Guatemalans who experience discrimination, corruption, and violence on the regular. I’ve come to see that as a human being, I have to speak against this. So after three weeks of observation and experience, let me give that a try.

This Fourth of July, as we prepare for our own upcoming election season, know that Guatemala is also preparing for its elections in September and many would rather not have them at all. Sounded corrupt and crazy at first to me too, but in Guatemala’s case, postponing elections might actually stop corruption. If you’d like to learn more about the details of recent events in Guatemala, look here, but the general gist is this: Guatemalan citizens recently found out that countless politicians including the Vice-President (a very powerful position in Guatemala) and almost certainly the President were involved in a corruption ring called “La Linea,” which embezzled billions of dollars from many parts of the country and traded influence—think Mafia. This is while hospitals failed, schools and infrastructure crumbled, and crime spiked all because of an alleged lack of government funding.

So now that elections are coming up and it’s common knowledge that all of the candidates have some sort of corruption on the scale from shady to horrific, people are saying no. For the first time in over sixty years, Guatemala is experiencing a democratic resistance movement against the corrupt alliance between the Guatemalan oligarchy, the Guatemalan military, and foreign business interests (only the second in its entire history since 1524).

What is rather amazing to see as an American is how active and passionate the people of Guatemala are about fixing their government. It’s not like the apathetic, vague, and unmotivated dislike for government that I’m familiar with as a college student in the Liberal Arts. People are protesting in the streets weekly and in some places almost daily.

Una Protesta en Antigua

On Friday I went by Central Park to run an errand early in the morning and I saw a parade of protesters circling the park with umbrellas for the heat and signs for the uninformed. What captivated me was not just the eloquent speeches, the endurance of the protest, or even the number of attendees. The people were from every walk of life.

Toda La Gente

At one point in the protest, indigenous women, a teenager, a farmer, a man in a Che Guevara shirt, a middle class woman, and a man in a suit all stood together. As I watched this scene, I felt like I was witnessing something that could someday be in an uplifting historical movie. This movement has the potential (but not the certainty) to be of all the people, by all of the people, and for all of the people in Guatemala. Even in the previous democratic spring revolution in 1944, which was a great movement for democracy, indigenous people and women were not included at the proverbial round table. But this movement, this one has the potential to be rather amazing. For the first time in history, these people have the potential to actively participate in government rather than accept threadbare attempts of political pandering. Maybe this once in a millennia opportunity explains why so many Guatemalans are actively protesting every day.

Una Protesta en Antigua

I struggle to understand what it must be like to be Guatemalan right now. It must be scary to know the best option on Election Day is no option. Even if elections are postponed and the right structural changes to hold proper elections are made, so much can go wrong. Constructing a new democracy on the ruins of centuries of dictatorships and corrupt pretenses of democracy will be like trying to construct Rome after a natural disaster. Facing such uncertainty must be harder than I can ever know. But I know that this country is facing it, so you bet your Star-Spangled flag that I’m going to support it as it does so.

“Todas Las Naciones”

You’ve Got a Friend In Me

Yes you do 🙂

I would now like to take this opportunity to answer the most pressing question on my Mama’s mind other than safety: Are you making any friends? (*For the record, my Mama would like to state that she thinks I’m cool and no, she does not actually worry about this for me—BUT IT MAKES A GREAT SEGWAY!) I will answer this made-up question in three parts.

Part One: Friends from Gringolandia (Forty points if you knew there was such a phrase as Gringolandia.)

As I mentioned in Stuff of Legends, I’ve made some great friends from my program. I’m attending the University of Arizona’s first ever IDEAS-AVANSCO program in Antigua where we study a variety of different topics depending on our interests, all with a social and political focus. These lovely ladies and gentleman have been such a reassuring rock. We struggle together with plenty of things, whether it’s trying to speak in grammatically correct Spanish sentences, finding our way to new cafés, understand the social and political climate of Guatemala while living in effectively a tourist town (a wonderful one though), or trying to get all of our work done on time. In a phrase, we’re all figuring out how to walk and talk like real adults. And like any true strangers-turned-friends, it’s amazing how much we’ve come to trust one another with the stories of our lives.

Part Two: Friends from Antigua

I’d be remise if I didn’t talk about four special people from Guatemala who have been my friends when they really didn’t have to be. Ladies and gentlemen, let me present to you the first friend: Claudia Alonzo!!

Claudia

Claudia is our supervisor, La Jefa, and the General Manager of this non-baseball team we like to call AVANSCO. She arranges everything for us even when she doesn’t have to, politely corrects our mangled Spanish, and floods us with kindness. Last weekend at Semuc Champey would not have been possible if Claudia hadn’t arranged it for us, despite the fact that it was our independent trip and she had no obligation to us. From that same strain of kindness comes Stephany Montenegro!!

Stephany

Stephany is right alongside Claudia, working at our school trying to make sure we get the best experience. She has maturity and grace that well surpasses her age, which is the same as mine—meaning she is oodles cooler than me. What struck me the most about Stephany, besides her general friendliness, was how genuine her kindness and concern for our wellbeing is. She must have called or texted me more than a pollster during election season to make sure that I was feeling better after my first-week-sickness. And I hope that metaphor doesn’t make it seem like she bothered me; to the contrary, she warmed my heart, extending me the same amount of care I’d expect from an old friend. The final double duo of friendship comes in the form of my host parents, Jucky and José Morales!!

Lucky and Jose

The second they opened their door to me nearly two weeks ago, they greeted me with shouts of joy and hugs like they were another long-lost set of cool aunt and uncle (to clarify uncles and aunts in my readership, I said another—you’re cool too). They hug me, pack me food, tease me, and remain patient with me when I stumble with my words. That last part, their willingness to talk to me, is something I treasure to an incalculable extent. We don’t think about it, but with our families we have the ease and comfort of knowing that we can relax and talk as much as we want. We know for certain that they care about us. We also know that fear with people outside of our comfort zone that we’re talking too much, that we could be disappointing or boring them. Every time I’ve had that fear, Lucky and José have dashed it. Their boundless care for others exhibited in even the smallest gesture like motioning for me to sit down and tell them about my day makes, as my friend Alessondra says, my heart full. For all of these wonderful friends who make my heart full, know that it’s my goal to return the favor.

Part Three: The Friend I Want To Have

Juan Pablo

This week I met the coolest person that I’ve ever met. His name is Juan Pablo Romero Fuentes. Juan Pablo is from Jocotengango (just outside of Antigua) and runs a school called Los Patojos, which means The Little Ones, that he started out of his house for kids in a community rampant with indescribable and inequitable tragedies. His school has had thousands of students, and now stands in a new facility that looks like it came straight out of a children’s book or a dream. I get the privilege to intern there, and I had to stop myself from physically bouncing in excitement during the car ride over. On my first day at Los Patojos on Wednesday, the depth of care and intelligence with which Los Patojos approaches education floored me. They take care of nutritional, health, clothing, and emotional problems that face these kids so that it’s possible to clear those hurdles and actually learn. In addition to regular school subjects, Los Patojos kids can learn dancing, sports, music, art, cooking, and whatever else they can dream of learning. To learn more about the school and Juan Pablo, watch this video. In person, Juan Pablo is even more hilarious and insightful than he seems in the video. His hospitality and openness to me and my fellow gringo interns made me feel like I belonged, which is an incredibly generous gesture to extend to a foreigner to the program, not to mention to the country. But that’s who Juan Pablo is. I hope that I get to call him my friend in the same way my sister hopes to someday call Taylor Swift her friend. It would be an honor.

Maybe you noticed a trend of effusive kindness and willingness to welcome amongst all my friends. (Twenty points if you did—I know it’s generous, but so are they. Much like my imaginary point system, their kindness is free and limitless, so their mindset is ‘why not give a lot?’) In the spirit of friendship, I am trying hard every day to treat everyone I meet with the same level of respect and humanity I’ve received. Let’s be honest: it’s easy to ignore every street vendor with indifference, to suspect and fear the guys standing on the corner, or talk without thoughtfulness to the people in restaurants or museums. But we have to remember that each person we meet is actually a person—a person with family, friends, inside jokes, a first grade teacher, and passions. Empathy is to indifference as smiling is to frowning: easier (here’s looking at you, SATs). It may take some effort, but it takes more effort to stifle humanity than it does to let it flourish.

Thanks for listening, friends. Hug someone you love today.

*special thanks to my new friends for letting me scour their Facebooks for pictures*

The Stuff of Legends ~Special Edition~

This was too good to condense and throw in with this week’s edition of Abby’s Antics in Antigua.

Six a.m. Friday morning. We are past Guatemala City, driving towards the center of the country. For two hours I’ve seen people traveling on foot, on bus, or on motorcycles in dozens of different paths to work before the sky had even turned purple, much less light blue. I envy my group members who can sleep easily on the ride, but in the midst of my insomnia, I see incredible things.

At the outskirts of cities, I see mountains and valleys of colorful slums stacked like matchboxes—something which simultaneously leaves me in awe of its unfamiliarity and beauty and also in emotional shambles as I start to understand the surface of poverty. And as for the mountains themselves, I stare at them in more wonder than an infant seeing television for the first time. They are so unique and dominating in their altitude and unconventional shapes. I know the pictures that we take cannot explain their majesty (and no, I’m not being hyperbolic).

Las espinas de los dinosaurios

Their ridges are like the spines of sleeping dinosaurs who have been covered for thousands of years by green, trees, coffee plants, and now colorful telephone poles. While we’re on the topic of colorful interruptions, I see everything from houses to cars to trees painted in bright colors to signify allegiance to dozens of political parties in the months before the upcoming presidential elections in Guatemala.

La influencia de los políticos

To me, it is at once a unique and also unsettling sight. When I later asked around about it, I was told that it was a terrible thing to clog the countryside with political paraphernalia and at the same time suggesting politicians’ dominance and ownership of the people. After about six hours of driving, we arrive at a small place with thatched houses for guests and an open dining area that overlooks El Río Lanquín. Instantly we swivel our heads at the unfamiliar and striking sights. With a few others, I swing on a rope swing and jump in. My friend Zazil scrapes up her legs and has to pour straight alcohol onto them, after which she takes a swift shot of tequila with salt and lime like an actual pro. At most, she whimpered for a few seconds. Courageous and adventurous don’t quite cover her.

After that bravery, we all go tubing down the river, seeing scenes that look more like pictures drawn in The Jungle Book than real life. Isn’t it funny, we all think, how we compare real life to simulated life? To get to our hostel, we have to ride standing up in the bed of a 4×4 truck, holding onto metal scaffolding. I feel like that same infant marveling at a whole new world. Again I see the mountains, only this time we’re cutting through them, tumbling through the different Mayan houses sandwiched by the road and coffee plantations. I’m like a dog sticking my head in the air, watching the world pass me as my hair whips in my face. Again, the troubling thought that I’ve kept to myself all day rises like smoke: these mountains aren’t too far from many others which were under a genocidal siege known as the Scorched Earth. This is how it has been for me in Guatemala; a constant mixture of beautiful wonder with political and social realities. For the record, I wouldn’t have it differently. This is the reality and not the amusement park film version, and it is so much better.

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La vista del Hostal

When we arrive at Sempuc Champey, I’ve nearly forgotten that it was our destination. I was so captivated by the previews of the drive that I forgot what we had signed up to see. Semuc Champey is a national park monument that has mountains twice as tall and beautiful as the largest castles in the world and most notably, a river that spills small waterfalls into beautiful pools of light blue until it all falls down into one giant waterfall.

On Saturday morning at nine a.m., my group and I, the Fantastic Fifteen, set out on the most arduous, steepest, muddiest, most humid hour-long hike to El Mirador, the lookout place, to see the areal view of what my host papa calls Paradise. It was awesome. We climb in zig-zags around the Guatemalan jungle, and no one felt unchallenged. After we hiked down the mountain, we jumped into the river’s pools in our bathing suits to wash away the mud. Overwhelming levels of endorphins hit us as our heads emerged from the water and we saw that in fact we were in Paradise.

Semuc Champey es el Paraíso

No level of descriptive language can express our happiness or its beauty, so I’ll not try. We swam through the pools. We climbed and slid down waterfalls as tall as NBA basketball players. We swam in more pools of cool water. We floated on our backs. We slipped on rocks, splashed, and laughed. And when our guide told us we had to go, we climbed back up the waterfalls. I cannot contain my excitement over that mind-exploding fact: WE CLIMBED UP WATERFALLS.

Of all that we did that weekend that was semi-sketchy, caving was absolutely the most hilariously and terrifyingly sketchy thing we did. In nothing but bathing suits and sandals, we walked, climbed, swam, dove, and laddered through the caves. At one point when we climbed up two metal ladders tied together with soaked ropes, we had to grip our thin white candles (our only light source) in our teeth. No joke, I heard a choir of children singing the song “Will I Lose My Dignity” from the musical RENT in my head the entire time. It seemed eerily real. (Ten points if you believe me, which you should.) This expedition was the definition of insanity and fear of the unknown and I’d never do it again.

But I’m so glad that I did it in the first place. Here’s why:

IDEAS-AVANSCO Familia

(Now comes my favorite part.) That absurdly dangerous caving trip, as well as everything else of this past weekend, brought us, the students of the first ever IDEAS-AVANSCO group, together. We stuck together like kids on a rope (if you go to Penn State, you get me). With no technology and stacks of free time spent sitting on hammocks and porches over looking rivers, we got to know one another through organic, digital-free bonding. You better believe we looked out for each other on the hikes, in the caves, in the trucks, and in the tubes. Simply put, we were all that we had, so we held on to each other. We sang together, salsa and merengue danced together, ate together, talked about social and political issues with passion together, and laughed together. I was glowing because I had found my people. On Saturday night before dinner, as we tried to soak in and process the events of the day, we remarked that this was the most adventurous thing we have ever done in our lives and that this is the stuff of legends to tell our grandkids we were once explorers.

Ben Franklin, We’re Not In Pennsylvania Anymore

My new summer home!

Hi! Thanks for coming! Please, take a seat!  No, I’m just surprised someone wanted to read this, so thank you! Let me say that I’m just happy you came to hear about my summer study abroad in Guatemala. This origin story will only take a few minutes, I promise.

The only way I might’ve guessed two years ago B.C. (~before college~) that I’d study abroad in Antigua, Guatemala this summer is if I had run my hand along a spinning globe until the bumps under my fingers slowed down and by chance I landed on it. Let’s be real, folks. I’m from a small Pennsylvania town outside of Valley Forge and Philadelphia, and I study English and Secondary Education–you wouldn’t have guessed Guatemala as my summer study spot either.

So then why, right?

Serendipity is the shortest answer. The Spark Notes summary might say that I signed up for a Latin American history class on a whim during my first semester in college, which sent me in a different academic direction than I had planned. In one semester, I felt my stomach drop in surprise like it was dropping down a canyon. My brain clouded with dust as everything I thought I had known about the United States’ interactions with Latin America swept away and new information settled. (I know my professors got a kick out of how frequently my eyebrows shot up and I went, “Really? That happened?” To them, I was late to the proverbial party like a kid shouting the obvious, ‘Smoking is Bad For You,’ at today’s doctors. ) The history of Guatemala struck my heart more than any other, and can’t express how much I really, really mean that.

My thesis at the Penn State Schreyer Honors College focuses on the U.S. involvement in the 1954 coup of the democratically elected Guatemalan government and the subsequent thirty-six year civil war and half-century of corruption, violence, and economic inequality. Didn’t know that happened? Yeah, me either. [If you did: 10 points. Count your points at the end of the summer for a maybe-theoretical prize.] Turns out we’re not alone–most Americans have no idea about the coup or even where Guatemala is on a map. (It’s right here.)  

Because of my thesis, I searched all over my friendly, neighborhood interweb for a study abroad program in Guatemala. In a way, all of my research and coursework over the past two years has been preparation for my summer abroad. I’m as “prepared” as one can be to step into a new world. I’ve got my multiple canisters of bug spray (you have to wear it all the time, from when you shower in the morning to when you get ready for bed). I’ve got my versatile clothing ready for hot sun, cool rain, or hot rain. I’ve read all the travel notifications, reviewed my verb conjugations, and packed my vitamins.

But man, oh man, you can bet that I’m anxious. I’ll miss my family and friends. I’ll miss French toast with maple syrup and knowing the best places to go running. Most of all, I’ll miss my sense of secure comfort. Ben Franklin, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Pennsylvania any more. In Guatemala is not my home field advantage, and I know I’m going to need a generous learning curve. Guatemala also represents my “Big Plans.” It’s the essence of everything I’ve said I’m going to do for two years, so you can bet that now that the someday is tomorrow, there’s a small voice in me that can’t sleep that wants to whimper “just kidding” and curl up in my hometown. But it’s a small voice–nothing a little bit of humming and crossing my fingers can’t fix.

Tomorrow I go to Antigua, Guatemala to study through the University of Arizona a whole new language, history, and culture until August 8th. I’m excited and terrified to finally step into the world I’ve read about for two years, and I know my time’s sparser than chips in a complimentary bag of Lays. I’ve got exactly fifty-six days and nights in Guatemala, and every week I’ll post my stories. Wish me luck as I head out. Like I said, I’m just happy you stopped by to hear what I have to say. Cheers.