1/3/02 - 7:15am

Our host family's house is fairly large by local standards - two rooms in the main house, two rooms in the guest quarters, plus a separate kitchen/dining area. 

All is cement wall construction with tin roof over irregular wooden beams except the dining area which is wood siding.

Our guest rooms are fairly spacious with old but serviceable double beds.  The wooden wall between the rooms is an odd assortment of bits and pieces painted with an electric mint green paint.  We've seen this color everywhere so it must be cheap and plentiful.  It is obvious that this part of the house is an extension of the main house as there are two windows in the wall between and the wall has the stucco texture of an exterior wall.

1/3/02 - 1pm

One of the elements of the article I read about the EcoEscuela that brought us here was a description of common mistakes where words or phrases in Spanish sound alike but actually have very different meanings.  Here are some additional mistakes that we've discovered.

Power outages seem to occur every other evening between 6 and 9.  I expect that means that at peak usage hours this area has half the capacity that it needs and thus only half the towns get power (energia) each evening.

Determined that the spare girl that was here yesterday and the day before is the alcalde's daughter, and hence another niece.  She was much better at talking than either Maria or Barbara, so I could understand her and she explained that the emblem on the side of the dining shed was that of her father - but I couldn't tell if it was his personally or for his office.  Her name is Teresita.  I have a picture of the sign from the street side, show that it is a man raising a wall.

Last night we spent the evening hanging out at the edge of the street talking with Alex and Daniel at various points.  Daniel told us of a very bizarre local medical technique that his mother -in-law uses to cure headaches.  She grabs small bunches of hair between her fingers and pulls it, levering with her knuckle until it pops the scalp away from the head!  The locals believe that the resulting popping sound releases bad air from the head.  Daniel asked a stateside doctor about it who thought that it might work by releasing endorphins.

Back to the house: Cement floors throughout except in the cooking area just off the dining shed, where it is dirt floor.  The stove is a wooden box about 8" deep, filled with cement.  Cinder blocks along the outside hold up a thick metal plate that is the cooking surface.  None of the windows has glass or screens, although all have security bars (decorative black wrought iron).  All of the doors lock.

Zack's window faces the lake through the trees.  We've seen a number of different kinds of birds in the trees outside.  Most have been sort of basic black birds with long tail feathers, although we have seen one that was canary yellow.

Warning to other students: The credit card signs are bogus.  I tried to pay for a shirt and email by credit card, but they couldn't do it.

1/3/02 - 8:30pm

Pimienta tree - take two leaves and cook with 2 glasses of water.  Cures upset stomach.  - Samuel the local naturalist

Ulisses says you can make tea from small twigs of the same tree.  Apparently the small fruits of the tree are exported to Japan for medicinal purposes.

This afternoon we went for the school's volunteer work and nature hike.  Samuel lead us alone, as none of the other students joined the group.  We hiked up through town and further into the less densely populated areas.  Along the way Samuel described a number of the trees.  The pimienta tree described above was one.  The leaves have a wonderful piquant smell like a cross between pepper and mint.  There was another tree that has three colors of wood - yellow, white and brown.  Cedro is a fast-growing local cedar? used in furniture and house beams.  The wood doesn't look like any kind of cedar I've ever seen.  Along the way we saw a plant that we'd seen in the gift shop at the Tacoma arboretum.  When you touch the leaves of the plant they fold up.  The name in Spanish "Ojasdormillon" is derived from meaning "sleeping leaves."

The reforestation project is quite modest - somewhere in the vicinity of half an acre of ground that has a dozen or so different species of trees.  Undergrowth can overwhelm new trees, so they clear the area of non-tree plants regularly.  We're armed with machetes, a few minutes of instruction on the difference between "plantas" and "arbolitos" (plants and little trees), and turned loose to "limpiar" (clean) the area.  The machete is, of course, the universal yard tool in Central America and so we set out on our haunches or knees, whacking the plantas.  An hour later, my shoulders are screaming and I'm glad I've got anti-inflammatories at the house.  For a break he shows us a climbing vine that holds the trees to the ground and doesn't allow them to grow.  Another of the trees he tells us will grow to 40 meters in something like 50 years.

On the way back we stop for helados (ice creams), then crash on the bed at home.

After dinner, Mateo stops by to talk to Francisca.  They talk about where to find phones and the cost of sending four kids to school.  He's trying to build an organization to bring American college students to the area to do long-term (like 6 month) volunteer projects.  He's hosted as an NGO (non-government organization) by the alcalde and has access to their phones and computer equipment.  So far, his work is funded by his own work back in the U.S. and by writing to U.S. philanthropic organizations for grants.  Apparently there has been enough graft in the local projects that the major U.S. funding agency is pulling out of the area.  Thus, the politics and infighting among the local groups is intense.   Mateo has built a web site that is hosted stateside and paid by his sister.

Zack and Ulisses played a last game of Five Crownes which Ulisses won.  Zack made a present of the game to Ulisses, who then bade us, "Bien viaje" (good travels).

1/4-6/02 - written after our return

On the fourth we left San Andres and took the lancha to Flores and checked into a hotel.  We spent the day shopping  for souvenirs, packing them in our bags and setting up a tour of Tikal for the fifth.  That evening, I committed a horrendous error and ate a beef steak at the hotel restaurant - thus infecting myself with a truly nasty dysentery.  When multiple doses of Imodium throughout the night didn't even touch it, I took one of the Cipro that we'd gotten from the UW Med Center.  By morning I was on my feet again, although barely, and we cancelled our trip to Tikal.  Through the stomach cramps, and frequent restroom visits, I visited the EcoMaya office and arranged to leave for Guatemala City a day early figuring that if I needed serious medical attention, at least Zack would be in a hotel where the staff spoke English and he could get room service.  We caught the afternoon flight out and were in the hotel by late afternoon and, while my stomach was still a little tender, I was mostly recovered.  That Cipro is miraculous stuff!  That left us with an extra day in Guatemala City since we couldn't rearrange our flight stateside, and so we needed to hunt around for a book store that had books in English.  I got myself a very interesting book on CIA operations in Guatemala and Zack ended up with a used J. K. Rowling book on Quiddich.

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