It's hard to remember that it's winter these days ;)

From the terrace of my cabaña at a hostel in Mazunte, on a hill above the beach, I was trying to imagine cold and rainy Portland, my land-mate back home, fighting off raccoons in the middle of the night to save our chickens and ducks.  I was trying to imagine driving my car, listening to the news on public radio, or the sounds of geese and the great horned owls. Or the first buds starting to open in the forest after a long winter.  It felt so far away.

Then I started imagining where I was going next, a small ecovillage, in a small village in the mountains of Southern Oaxaca, with a little preschool and primary school for the local indigenous children as well as the children of the foreigners who live there. I could feel myself already there, and so excited to get inspired and help as a volunteer in any way I could.

And now, after a 2-hour collectivo ride through the extremely windy mountain roads, with the driver going so fast around the curves, wondering if I should have brought a plastic bag with me (just in case - or is my stomach strong enough?), I have arrived here at Ecovillananda.  Again, I find myself up around 8000ft, but here, the air is so clean. Again, cold nights and sunny days, the familiar sounds of turkeys gobbling, roosters crowing, and the occasional eruption of dogs barking. I can't wait to get to know this place, already feeling that 3 1/2 weeks will be too short.

I am back in Xela after 2 weeks at La Escuela de la Montaña, which is in a small village in the mountains, with many trees and plants everywhere. It was a welcome change from Xela, where I found that I was out of breath a lot. Not only was I breathing in so much exhaust from the cars and buses as I walked through the streets, on the tiny sidewalks, but the city is at about 8000ft, which I am not accustomed to.  Although it is called the Mountain School, I believe we were at a lower altitude, and I found it much easier to breathe.

At both schools, we had host families. In Xela, I stayed at their house, with my own room. I lived with 4 wonderful women (3 sisters and their mother). They also had 2 dogs and 1 chicken, who slept in a cardboard box in the house at night, roaming the yard during the day.  She laid her first egg while I was there!

I loved my host family. One sister worked part-time in a lawyer's office. Another sister worked remotely for a television station in Antigua, and the other sister attended University. They all also helped their mother tend the store that was connected to their house. The bell was always ringing when there was a customer, and they took turns going to help them.  I got into the rhythm of joining them, with my knitting, every evening to watch their telenovela (soap opera) before dinner.  It is a good way to learn a language -- watching soap operas.

The mother, and sometimes the sisters, made the best meals. The most typical food was eggs, refried black beans, plantains, and of course, tortillas -- always tortillas -- but it seemed that every meal was different, and delicious.  When I was sick with the flu for a couple of days, she made me chicken noodle soup.  One morning, she made pancakes. And one of the best treats was arroz con leche - rice with milk and sugar, for drinking.

At the Mountain School, we didn't sleep at our host family's house, just ate our meals there. The people in this village were extremely poor. They cooked our meals over fire on stoves made of cement blocks and metal. Many of the men would wake up at 4am to sometimes travel very far to go to the coffee farms to work, and it wasn't always sure that they would have work.  Some families had much nicer houses because one of the family members was in the United States sending back money.

To get to the United States legally from Guatemala, you need to have $125 US dollars just to make an appointment at the embassy to ask for a visa, and they will most likely say no, unless you know someone with influence, or have even more money.  So it is basically impossible for almost all of the families in this village because $125 is a TON of money for them.

Of course, most of my time this past month has been spent studying Spanish - in class 5 hours/day, 5 days/week, one-on-one with a different teacher each week. Then I had a lot of homework as well. Before I arrived at PLQ, I was a bit overwhelmed by the idea of so much time in class, but I was happy to find that the time really flew by.  All of my teachers were great at balancing teaching new grammar, practicing with exercises and worksheets, and conversation.  I spent a lot of time in classes talking  with my teachers about visions of the future, possibilities, politics, education, plant medicine, and so much more.

The last day of my second week in the city, my teacher and I really bonded when in the middle of a grammar lesson, the table started to shake. We were actually up on the second floor of a wooden building, a bit outside of where everyone was studying. The whole room began to shake quite a bit. Un temblor! They didn't call it an earthquake, more of a tremor, but it lasted at least 30 seconds, maybe longer.  Everyone was safe, but it was definitely a little scary, even for my teacher, who is used to them, with so many volcanoes and a fault line in this part of Guatemala. This was my first earthquake experience ever.  Apparently, it was a 6.5 at the epicenter, just over the border in Chiapas, Mexico. We were far away from there, so it wasn't as strong for us.

In Xela, I went on many field trips my first week. One of them was a hike to the viewpoint of a volcano, where the last picture of me was taken in my last post.  Our guide led us up this steep dusty trail so fast at 7am on Saturday. I love hiking, but I like to go slow, stopping every few minutes to look at plants or birds, so this hike was very hard for me, especially at 8000ft.  But we had to get to the viewpoint quickly to see the smoking crater before the clouds rolled in, which they did only 15 minutes after we arrived.  While our guide was telling us stories of his time fighting in the war, in those very mountains where we sat, we heard a rumbling sound, which, if you weren't paying attention, might have sounded like an airplane. But there were never airplanes flying overhead, and it was the volcano.  Then we saw thick smoke rising from the crater above the clouds. This place is very alive.

My second week in the city, I skipped a lot of the field trips so I could learn how to weave with a backstrap loom at a place called Trama Textiles.  This is a women's weaving cooperative where women from all over the surrounding villages, which are quite poor and still living with the effects of 30 years of civil war and a corrupt government, can bring their creations and get paid a price that they think is fair.  The women who run the organization, who are also Mayan women, have a store where they sell these beautiful clothes, bags, and other fabrics.  They also offer classes about weaving and embroidery.  So I spent 11 hours, over the course of a few days, on one project.  I have been trying to support these women's cooperatives when I can. There are so many little stores where you can buy these beautiful items, but I am often skeptical about who is profiting off of these sales.  So with the cooperatives, I have more confidence that I am paying a fair price, and that it actually goes to the people who did the work.

There are so many more stories to tell, but there is only so much I can write on my phone.  I am sad to be done studying Spanish.  I learned so much! But I've been feeling like there is a wall in my brain between everything I know and my ability to speak the language. I am hoping that my next 6 weeks in Mexico will give me the opportunity to practice more and break down this wall. I leave for Chiapas tomorrow morning. I am excited for the next leg of my journey, but sad to be leaving this beautiful country where the people are so nice.

If you have any interest in learning Spanish, I highly highly recommend PLQ and La Escuela de la Montaña. Not only do you get so much out of it, but your tuition truly goes toward supporting the local communities here and their projects.

Yet another amazing 2 weeks of this trip! With a recommendation from a dear friend, I have been attending an awesome Spanish language school here in Xela (Quetzaltenango), Guatemala. It's called PLQ, and I came here because the school has a strong social justice focus. It supports many local community programs, and is committed to teaching all students about the history, politics, and local community issues of the country, with presentations, documentaries, and field trips with local guides. My time here has been so educational, with a lot of intense and depressing information, and inspirational teachers.

As I learned about how recently war was the way of life here, I was reminded of how we do not get taught this kind of history/world politics in schools in the US (at least I didn't).  There are a lot of important things children don't learn in school, but I suppose that is a whole other blog.

The history of colonization in Guatemala, and of how the indigenous people here are and have been treated, is not unfamiliar if you have have studied the history of colonization and oppression of indigenous people in the US. Guatemala has a large population of indigenous Mayan people, with 21 of the 24 languages spoken here being different Mayan languages, such as K'iche, Mam, and Tzutujil.  In the 1800s, the government stole land from the indigenous people and gave it to German coffee farmers, and then made new laws allowing the rounding up of landless folks and forcing them into slave labor for the coffee harvest every year.  Also, these coffee farm owners were granted immunity for certain crimes, such as murder.

It wasn't until 1944, when a revolution sparked a 10-year Democratic Spring in Guatemala, that the lower and middle-class began to get more of a voice, with the new presidents during this time working toward social and economic change, including better health care and education, voting rights for women, and restricting the privileges of the elite class. First Juan Jose Arevalo, and then Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, were the presidents during this time. When Arbenz decided to enact a land reform law, which would take away unused agricultural land from large property owners to give to landless rural folks (remember how it was their land to begin with?), guess who didn't like this ~ The United Fruit Company. And guess who were major stockholders of the UFC at the time ~ the US Secretary of State and the director of the CIA.  So, of course, the US/CIA organized a coup to stop this from happening, and put in power someone they liked better. All of this took place over a few years, and eventually led to a major civil war in Guatemala, lasting from 1960 to 1996. So many people died and were disappeared, 83% of them, indigenous Mayans, and the majority of humans rights violations were found to be committed by the state.

So much violence, tragedy, corruption, and trauma, and not that long ago.  The war is now in the past, but the reality today is that there are still very few work opportunities, especially for the rural indigenous folks. There are many transnational companies here, and mega-projects happening, including mining, hydroelectric, African palm oil, sugarcane, and bananas. These companies are all either using up valuable resources, such as land and water, or polluting them, or both, and this has sparked a lot of community resistance, which in turn triggers more violence from the state, and at least 196 activists have been assassinated since 2000. So there is still a lot of work to be done fighting corruption here in Guatemala.

Back in 2006, an agreement between the United Nations and Guatemala set up an independent body called the CICIG, the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, which has been successfully working against corruption in the government, and other organized crime. Unfortunately, the current president, Jimmy Morales, another celebrity-turned-president, who is being investigated for illegal campaign funding and sexual harrassment by the CICIG, declared last year that he would not be renewing the agreement allowing the CICIG to continue its work in Guatemala. At least 71% of Guatemalans are against this decision, and it is dangerous for many reasons.

I have left out so many details, and key figures, but I really wanted to share with you a bit of what I have been learning here (without writing a book about it). In fact, there already is a book about some of this that was recommended to me, called Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala by Stephen Kinzer.  Learning about the history, the politics, and the realities of life for people here was one of the goals I had for this trip. With all of the talk and news and rhetoric about immigration and caravans of refugees coming to the US, I feel it is important to hear the stories of real people with first-hand experience, in order to understand the complexity of the situation. This is what PLQ is making possible for me, and I am so grateful.  Next time I share, less history, more first-hand accounts, plus other lighter stories of my time here, including stories about animals, food, weaving, weather, volcanoes, earthquakes, and more, oh, and more pictures.

This morning, I head to PLQ's sister school, La Escuela de la Montaña, for 2 more weeks of studying Spanish. I have heard it's very similar to PLQ, but a bit warmer, and not in the city, so, more nature, which I am really excited about!