Indecision 2011?

It's the middle of an election season here in Guatemala, and the campaigns here are a ways different than in the US. You cannot go anywhere, even to remote villages, without seeing rocks and stones and houses and light poles and just about every other surface painted with the different parties' symbols. This is pretty permanent advertising on old surfaces that would normally look like beautiful stone.


This is right when you get off the boat in our local town, Santa Cruz. It means "For a better Santa Cruz, I am Patriota." Patriota is a controversial party whose symbol is a fist.

There are catchy, annoying songs for every party that are played off of loudspeakers on repeat, big rallies where people carry flags or get to ride on some large boats on the lake, a rarity, and lots of freebies like free shirts that advertise the various parties.


I've been working with Alex to start our own collection of pictures from the various parties' ubiquitous symbols. Here are a few of them...

Feliz Cumpleanos Alex!!

Happy Birthday Alex!!

Oh Hi NYC Heat Wave...

Hi from Lake Atitlan!! Chloe, Alex, and I are chilling here today. A welcome break after yesterday's 8 hour hike.
It's the middle of the rainy season but it's now a canicula...a break in the rain with beautiful weather every day. Life in paradise, it's tough...

Moving Mountains

So we've been wanting to hike San Pedro Volcano (the mountain to the right in all of my pictures of the lake) for a long time now. Our plans have been thwarted by the rain for a few weeks, but this weekend, we finally had a chance to hike it. We got up at 2AM, and our trusty guide Lorenzo brought us up to the top to watch the sunrise, 4 hours later. The lake is gorgeous at sunrise. We had a wonderful day for the hike too.As usual, pictures don't do it justice, but here are a few.

Walking up to Clinic

Getting to clinic involves a refreshing little uphill stroll, if you will.


Of course, while we're taking this hike, the locals tend to pass us without breaking a sweat while lugging quite a few pounds of firewood on their backs.


After about 20 minutes of huffing and puffing up the hill, you round this final bend. You can see a tuk-tuk at the top of this picture, the little red cars that are basically a glorified motorbike with a roof. They are pretty much the only motorized form of transportation around the lake. There are now a whopping 3 of them in our little town of Santa Cruz (a few years back, there were none).


Reward for the daily hike: the view! Of course, before the clouds roll in. Hiking in the rain can be pretty great too. The town of Santa Cruz is basically in the clouds.

And we've arrived at the clinic! (Puesto de salud.) This is basically the main square in the town of Santa Cruz (population ~2000), with a church, a library, and the school all in this little spot too. So we get to hear recess all day long when we're here in the clinic.

Never Gets Old

This is our view every morning (before the rain settles in), with beautiful variations on cloud formations around the volcanoes around this lake. We feel very lucky to be here. Alex and I are waiting for the arrival of "los Mels" from another Guatemalan town today. Yay WCMC 2014 in Guatemala! We'll be hitting up some of the other cute towns around the lake. So far Alex and I have only been to a handful of them, so we're excited to explore a little more.

In other news, our project is just about ready to get rolling. We'll be working on trying to collect data on pregnancy and lactation health and nutrition. The ultimate goal is to understand the mentality in regards to nutrition and health, so that we can work towards improving it. The beautiful forest here is full of delicious and healthy foods--yummy avocados, bananas, plantains, fruits, nuts, fish--but unfortunately they are not being utilized. Alex and I are trying to remain as aware of cultural competency (thank you, MPS) as we can as we start this project. We're hoping for some meaningful data that will be useful to the clinic and to nutrition projects in the future.

We've officially been in this country for 2 weeks. It's amazing how much has happened in that short amount of time--from getting used to living here to working in the clinic to realizing that we can see patients and get by with our little bit of Spanish. Several of the students who were here just left on Thursday (we'll miss them) and a new group have just arrived, so it's interesting to see the dynamic around here change. It's nice to still have several weeks ahead of us to hopefully really get the hang of things around here and to make a dent on the nutrition project.

Viviendo

A Brief Update

Hello All! I unfortunately can't upload pics at the local haunt where I have internet access, but I figured I'd update a little on what we actually do around here.

Two days a week is Spanish class, and 2 days a week are spent in the clinic. Most of the community members we see speak an indigenous Mayan language (there are many), so we conduct our histories by speaking in Spanish to a translator, who then speaks in the native K'atchikel language.

We can be assigned to one of many clinics every clinic day. The busy one can see up to 60 or so patients over the course of the day. The less busy one was at the top of a 1.5 hour steep (but beautiful) hike up a mountain to a remote village. There, we saw 7 patients. So what we see varies a lot, but regardless is an amazing learning experience.

Other adventures in our free time includes traveling to towns around the lake (which we can only do by boat), cooking potluck dinners, and practicing our salsa dancing skills. Many other adventuras as well :)

This country is unbelievably beautiful, and the people are all warm and welcoming. Pictures don't do it justice, but I'll try to post some when I get a chance to go to a real internet cafe.

Hasta Luego,
Julia

My Commute

Beat that, MTA

Lake Atitlan

We made it here, and it is absolutely gorgeous. At an internet cafe now, but updates and pics soon! Just did some grocery shopping and off the clinic soon. Hasta Luego.

Antigua

Alex and I are spending our first weekend here in Antigua, which is a quaint city not far from the capital. Antigua was actually the 3rd capital of Guatemala. Guatemala city is now the 4th. It was moved there after too many terremotos (earthquakes).

One word to describe what we've seen so far: colorful. We've explored a lot, and the city is full of beautiful old monestaries and markets, all gorgeous.

Tomorrow (Sunday) we travel to our new home at Lake Atitlan. Hasta Luego.

Departure

Hi Friends! Thanks for checking in. I'm going to be spending this summer working at a clinic in Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. I'll be leaving June 24th. Check in for pictures and updates over the summer :)

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