y mas

Lunchtime at Casa Olga

Street photo session while we wait

Fieldtrip Day

More photo reviews at the hospital

mas fotos de santiago

I really am pleased about this tuk-tuk ride, I promise

Arranging an Interview with the Natural Pharmacist

Julee and Jeremias in a Tuk-tuk

Santiago Atitlan

La Puerta a Posada de Santiago with Vanessa

Portraits with Earl Grey and Brenda

Jeremias playing Shelly

Arrival In Santiago Atitlan

Well despite some confusion on my part, I did arrive safely with the Bridges group at Posada de Santiago. The kids are much quieter than I'm used to but they are a lot of fun. I'm working with the boys teams even though we are only making one video this time. The Internet here is a little funny, it won't let me on on my laptop so I'm posting from my iPod. More later, Mariko.

Costco-esque

You know how sometimes you think, "I love buying toilet paper in bulk costco-style, but how can we solve the whole constantly changing the roll issue". Guatemala might be your place.

Day 3 on the same roll.

Guatemala - Week 1

Well my trip is already a quarter over and I haven't written anything because my first week in Guatemala has been packed full of touristy goodness and far too much Spanish. So here's an overview:
Not that my travel list has been extensive, but so far Guatemala City is one of my favorite cities to land in. Where the city sprawls over valleys, all the buildings crowd together on the ridges of the hills and look like they are trying to avoid falling into the deep jungle precipices at their backs. Traveling to Guatemala was so easy this time that I even have even eased up my hate of the Houston airport. I think it was the calm of traveling that made the chaos and overwhelming confusion that I believe always permanently exists three feet out side the Guatemala City airport truly underline the beginning of my adventure.
The first two weeks of my trip I'm spending in Xela, the second biggest city in Guatemala, and studying at a language school called Celas Maya. I found the school online and it's turned out to be a great place that I would recommend to anyone who is coming to learn Spanish. The director of the school even picked me up in Xela, which was a complete and very nice surprise since I was expecting to have to grab a taxi. I'm living a block away from the school with a woman named Ana Maria, her son, and her parents. Ana Maria has a pañeria that is connected to the garage of the house. It's a little awkward in the house because most of the time it's me and the grandparents and I think I'm a little too quiet for the taste of the older Ana Maria, but she makes delicious meals. I didn't think it was possible for me to grow tired of plantains.
The school provides activities almost everyday after classes. Last wednesday we went to Fuentes Georgina with a bunch of other students. It's a hotsprings about an hour outside of Xela, and it's quite beautiful. There is a waterfall and three pools of differing temperatures, the hottest of which I couldn't even get in completely. We also did salsa dancing classes and bar-hopping, a visit to a local women's weaving collective and going to dinner to listen to salsa music. Over the weekend, I explored more of Xela with a friend and went to Chichicastanango on sunday for their big market. More and photos soon because I have to get to a movie...
See you later,
Mariko

Immunizations

Well, travel plans are always subject to change, but I didn't expect my Peru trip to be grounded this soon (and I expected any grounding to be thanks to LANperu). But I cry not, because I'm not giving up on the plan, it's just evolving into something new and possibly more kickass, although possibly not. I am beginning to think that my well planned travels are doomed and I should just travel on whims. Organizing not being one of my strong points, it's far too much to expect my arrangements to survive any more than a two week lead-up to departure anyways. In the past this tendency for spontaneous travel, combined with my wimpiness about shots, has led to traveling without the recommended immunizations. I know this is bad, you don't need to give me the face, especially since earlier this week I went to solve this travel foul. Now in addition to whatever I was good against before, I am also prepared to laugh in the face of Hepatitis A and Typhoid. Thursday, I went to the travel doctor at the Downtown Seattle Public Clinic and got the rest of the basic recommended immunizations for most Central and South American countries. Everytime I have to get shots, I convice myself that I'm making up how much I dislike them and that it's a irrational fear from my childhood. Yet each time it's as unfun as I remember, but worse since there's no stickers anymore either. So I'm off to Guatemala soon and more about that later.

Three days later and the Hep A protected shoulder is still proving I got the shot.

See you around,
Mariko

Peru Ahoy!

People keep on asking me how the preparations are going for my next great adventure, so I've decided to use my blog to let people know about my preparations and eventual travel adventures. So background... In June I went on a rather spur-of-the-moment trip back to Peru with my good friend Maddy. Maddy and I actually met on my first trip to Peru in 2005, when I went with my family for my mom's work. My mom was working for Bridges to Understanding teaching one of their international workshops, and Maddy was there with her family as another participant on the workshop. We spent the time working with students from the local colegio teaching them digital photography and creating digital stories as well as making many friends in Peru and learning a small amount of Spanish.
So back to June, we returned to Peru, but stayed in the larger city of Cusco. We spent the first week in language school studying Spanish at a school called Acupari where my spanish skills were honed to barely passable. We went and visited our friends in Ollantaytambo, ran into some of our old students, and generally enjoyed what would turn out to be the vacation portion of our trip. The second week was spent participating in a Bridges workshop with students from Pukllasunchis. It was quite stressful, and at some points we didn't think our movie would even get done, but we took some great photos and had a lot of fun with our awesome students. Sooner than I expected or wanted our two and a half weeks were up and while we sat in a restaurant, eating chifa and bemoaning the shortness of our trip, we decided to return as soon as possible, like instead of school.

Some of the students, Andre (my partner) and Rey.

So since then we have been counting down the days (Maddy the hours) until we go back to Peru. Currently we plan to depart on December 27 and stay for about six months. I've been spending my time until then working on websites, hanging out with UW friends and watching a silly amount of travel channel. If you want to check out the movie my team made in Peru with Bridges, click here (http://www.bridgesweb.org/project_videos/Peru/08_peru_familia.mp4), but beware it's all in Spanish. Watch it anyways, it's basically about how Pukllasunchis is a family and solves conflicts with what they call rimancuy (that is probably spelled wrong, but means to come together). And for those of you who missed it, the first movie we made in Peru (http://www.bridgesweb.org/project_videos/Peru/projPeru_soccer.html). It has subtitles and is about a championship futbol game; passion, conflict, battles against the elements, it's pretty much the best missed video of 2005.
See you around,
Mariko