Great experiences

Well is has been a few days since my last posting. I could give you plenty of reasons why I have not written more, but they would probably be boring to you all. As I have mentioned before Internet access is available but not always reliable. Just yesterday while in school we were without electricity for about an hour. It seems that this is a common occurrence throughout Guatemala. No electricity also meant no water and not bathroom. So you can imagine at 8:30 in the morning after everyone has had breakfast and coffee...

I started my second week in Español immersion. This school, PLQ, as mentioned in my previous entry, really seems committed to social justice and progress for women and men. Some of the things that set them apart from other schools is that they offer paid vacation, sick time, and their teachers have contracts which means that they are not waiting for the telefono to ring on martes to let them know if they have work for the week. This school feels like a good fit for me so today I paid through the first week of septiembre. I will stay at the school until after 15 septiembre which will be a huge celebration of Guatemala achieving independence from Spain. After that I plan on a short trip to Mexico for three or four few days so that I can get my passport stamped. One can stay for 90 days on a stamp so I figure that after about 7 or 8 weeks of the immersion experience I will be ready for a vacation. And then I can stay until my return date of 8 diciembre.

Yesterday the school held a conference for students. Remember now that this school has a very strong stance on social justice issues. A young man who is now 39 years old who had fought as a guerrilla against the army came and told of his experiences during the years of the conflict. It has only been since the very late 1990´s that the peace accords were signed. His told of how his entire family had to leave Guatemala for Mexico before being slaughtered and then how some of them returned to fight. He trained in the mountains with only a few others. I was amazing to hear his stories. He talked about how the CIA financially supported the armies, he told stories of how the army killed, raped, and tortured entire pueblos. There were only hundreds of brave women and men serving as guerrillas who fought thousands of men trained by US military counterintelligence. It was breathtaking.

Today about 15 students went to Los Vahos, a natural sauna. It was a great afternoon and a very good way to get to know other students. The sauna is heated from the volcanoes and then getting into the cold shower afterwards was very refreshing. Tonight I will be attending a film at the school which will have a strong message about Guatemalan history that I will be able to tell you about later.

As the days go by I am beginning to have more español under my belt, but I still have many months to practice so that I will be able to at least order from a Mexican menu.

Adios Amigos