Living the homeless life in xela

Homelessness: the closest thing to true community I have ever seen

In xela we stayed at the cheapest hotel that all the traveling artisans stay at, however I'm pretty sure we would consider traveling artisans hobos, they don't have homes and they perform or sell homemade things in the street. They cook together and sleep in the dorms sharing knowledge and stories teaching each other skills. Because my roommate is friends with a band that falls in this category we spent most of our time in xela with artisans. Very cool.

Street art and community cooking: the dish that looks like a pizza is a spanish tortilla with beets zuchini onion and egg and the dish that looks like key lime pie is quacamole, all for around 5$ total. it fed 8 of us with leftovers for the whole day

I have internet!

And for some reason areomexico says you need to arrive 3 freakin hours early so after a ten min check in I have time too, this is definitely worth leaving at 4am...

So here's some pictures of san pedro, my friend lisa, my sweet kitten, and derumbas!

Weinie bar

Dear casting for spiderman, superman, anyone needing a super strong and fearless man, a real man's man;

Perfect candidates found: Guatemalan bus driving team.

We woke up at 5:30 after going to bed around 2:00 to make the first chicken bus to xela for the ultimate fair: carnival rides that have been sold or trashed because they no longer meet american safety standards, and any other regulations have been completely disregarded because here "risk" has a totally different meaning. I officially don't think you can call yourself a real addrenalin junkie until you have bungie jumped from a platform made of corn stalks and completed with discontinued american materials, with no directions or rules of operation.

I however have abandoned all intentions of being an addrenalin junkie since hiking 8 miles off a mountain with a broken back so I have no room to talk but seeing such an extremely different culture of non-fear did jolt me. Even though fun places like the fair highlight our differences we were all the most shocked by places of non fun but necessity such as the chicken bus.

At the end of a long but good weekend we made our way at around 5 to the bus terminal not sure if the last bus left at 5 or 6 or if they even ran that late on sunday, thankfully I still don't really know spanish because when we asked where the buses going to the capital were(we knew we were too late for a direct bus to san pedro) they said nowhere, gone, there were no buses left...while I was blissfully unaware they remembered there was one last bus that was running late so we followed at a run and made the bus, but the driver was running late and gets paid by trip rather than hour so we began rally-ing it to the capital. After several stops one of them including doughnut venders getting on and back off while the bus was moving it started to rain hard and get dark all at about the same time we made it to the major mountain highway. Here I started to notice the guy that wasn't driving would disappear after each stop out the back door and reappear in the front door much later.you could even hear him crawling around on top of the bus strapping on oversized cargo.every turn you can feel the outside wheels lift a little, we are taking turns at like 60mph. I'm afraid the bus is going to roll yet this guy is literally carrying heavy cargo on top of a tin roof then walking to the other end and swinging in the front door, hundreds of times a day, everyday.

Not quite as shocking, but everyone you meet here lives life so differently, I talked to a girl earlier today that said she wanted to sail the world so she literally showed up at a dock everyday asking people with boats if she could sail and after a week someone said yes and she grabbed her stuff and left that day. it makes you realize life is at our finger tips, we just have take it. So much is possible that we think is impossible,i was amazed for me it was a stretch to ride a chicken bus, yet for so many others the bar is so much higher.it made me wonder how many things we could do if we just believed them to be possible, or needed them to be possible, an artisan told me that for two years he used a drill bit and a deconstructed lighter as a mechanical drill because he needed to feed his family, and that was his work, he did what he had to do.every artisan I meet i am amazed, the ingenuity is amazing, like nothing I have ever seen, and I think its because of a culture with a mixture of nessesity and non fear. people seem to know they have to take charge of their lives and can't or won't let fear or anything else stop them. maybe im wrong and I just haven't seen the culture in depth and I'm sure I will change my mind again but for now I'm amazed I wonder what could happen if these people had access to the resources we do, if they would turn into us or if they would freakin make things happen?

I kissed a drunk girl

One of the many best parts of the night:

Girl in bathroom stall "i can't get out" boyfriend outside,"the lock is inside, you locked it" me in another stall to girl"you can turn the light on its just a switch by the door, girl "i can't get out"boyfriend is knocking on outside of door"its right here look where I'm knocking".eventually she escapes her self-induced prison and sees me washing my hands and says"your cute, can I have a kiss?" Me,"sure"we kiss on the cheek, and me and her boyfriend both wonder was that such a good idea she did just lock herself in a bathroom who knows what germs she could have picked up...

I'm doing just fine now

Aprender the other side of ingenuity.

Every time my school has a conference or movie showing we learn new super depressing facts about the civil war, which is actually amazing because everwhere else no one will talk about it at all, its like they don't want to scare you away with the past, but its their past and I think travelors should know the people not just the places they visit.

The movie we watched was written produced and acted entirely by indigenous Guatemalans and it started with a man running for days to tell the closest village that everyone he knew had been slaughtered and his entire town burnt to the ground and that they were next and the town had to decide what to do, with little hope of survival. They have connections with the rebels but know they will still be drastically outnumbered, they tell the rebels and even though they were told not to act they come, but the leader is being drawn as a bit jaded, and hungry to make a point.eventually the people are faced with the choice to stay and fight or run to the hills and leave behind everyone that is not able along with everything they have ever known.they choose to stay but one msn who had already lost his wife and daughter to the war wants to leave but by this time the rebel leader won't let him and threatens him at gunpoint.when the other rebels hear one rebel confronts him and the leader calls them cowards that need to be forced to do the right thing.here was the most impactful thing I have heard in a while: the other rebel responds by asking what do you want them to do where were they meant to learn courage, they are a conquered people they survived by running one group after another has taken their liberty, their homes, their families, what do you expect of them, when that is all they know. How can you force them to be the casualties, even for a good cause, you are atoll forcing them to be your weapon. I was shell shocked and thought how can we ask why would these people elect a man that knowingly killed thousands of his own people to president? How can I expect these people to think like me,i have no idea what history has taught them or formed in them, and not ancient history but current history; middle aged adults were young adults during the last war, they have lived through genocide.

The film finishes with the questioning rebel letting the questioning villager leave and him immediately being captured and tortured by the army, and with the rebels realizing he would give away their cover and deciding to try and hide all the villages in a nearby cave, but when the army arrived they found and killed absolutely everyone, and only a couple of the rebels survived to tell the story.
Not only was I really impacted by the statement, and tragic true story but the really impressive telling of humanity.there was no one right side like I want there to be. the rebels obviously were better than the army, but they were still run by people that are suseptable to both good and evil and change in the face of really tough circumstances, like we all do. Its much less drastic but relevant to people today,i wrote earlier how amazed I was by these people, their ingenuity, and since then I have tried to see another side to the story. There is no right side, we are all human. My teacher keeps retooling me stories of herlife as I tell hermine and each time a think how can I possibly try to excision the greed in america our what not she reasons with a story exactly like mine or tells me of the drastic problems with alcoholism here, or I go hang out with freddy who taught me how he mcgivered a lighter into a drill, and he walks away for a min to go do a line. Even though I have always known it I have wanted to believe their is one right way, one good people, somewhere where they have it figured out, but I think we just have to work everyday to be the people we want to be.

Best christmas ever

Guatemala has a holiday called "day of the kids" for it we taught random kids how to slack line, parents play this wierd game where they compete to feed their grown children a bottle the fastest while the children are dressed in as many layers as possible, barney music plays on the tv all day long, children get cerviche and whatever else they want for meals, and the kids don't have to do any work all day. Pretty rad

No leche in la noche

So I got sick for the first time after having my first smoothie in a gringo bar but more interesting was my host grandfathers explanation of why it made me sick:

Supposedly milk is not the problem.milk is fine if you drink it warm in the mornings but during the winter, which it is here, at night, you can't have cold milk? Still not sure why but apparently this is a well know fact. Kind of cool,