Eli in Guatemala

Day 2 of the Independence Day celebrations was easily one of the craziest days of my life. I'll try my best to put it into words!  Thursday – September 14th The day started at 3:30 a.m., when the majority of our students (most with at least 1 family member) met in town to board three buses that would take us on the day's adventures. Guatemala has a tradition the day before Independence Day of running a lit torch across the entire country (think the Olympic torch) to celebrate independence. In the last few decades, this tradition has evolved a bit. Now, rather than running a torch across an entire country, every school in the country goes out of town, then returns later in the day after lighting a torch and runs the torch through their town. Or at least this was my understanding of it at 3:30 on Thursday...  In any case, we boarded busses to head to DinoPark, essentially the Guatemalan version of a themed park with life-size dinosaurs. It's all based on the Jurassic World mo...

Guatemalan Independence Day is September 15, but most of the celebrating happens in the days prior to the 15th. Most of the celebrations revolve around young people and schools. While everyone partakes in the celebrations, it's really the schools that are the heart and soul of all of the major events. Working at a school, I got to be in the center of all of it! So much happened over these couple of days that I'm gonna give each day its own post! Wednesday – The Parade Wednesday's big event was the parade for Grades K-5. The theme for the parade was "a day of flowers", and our school really went all out! The day started very early as all the teachers gathered around 6:30 a.m. to decorate a flatbed truck with hundreds of live flowers (donated by the families of our school) and dozens of paper flowers made by our students. The truck is where our band would sit and play during the parade! Most of the students in the band showed up to help us decorate the truck as well...

Antonio, who goes by Tono, is the English teacher at La Puerta Abierta, and he has become a great friend as well. On Sunday, he took me to his home village of San Antonio Palopó, a 10-15 minute drive from where I'm living in Santiago. San Antonio Palopó is a very small town, nestled in between the forest and the lake at the foot of the San Pedro Volcano. It was easily the most tranquil and serene place I've been so far in Guatemala, and I can't imagine growing up in a place like that. We played basketball with some of his cousins and neighbors, and then hot and sweating from the games, we found a secluded area to swim in the lake. Away from the bigger city, the lake was incredibly clear and blue. And the views were amazing. It was also super cool getting to meet Tono's parents, cousins, and friends. It was a great way to spend a Sunday!

Over the weekend, I along with a few teachers and most of the 6th grade class met at the town's basketball courts for hours worth of full-court games. It was exhausting, but a ton of fun. Basketball is popular in Guatemala, easily the second most popular sport behind soccer. Interestingly, basketball was long considered a women's sport in Guatemala. Apparently, that perception has changed quite a bit in the past 10-15 years as the NBA has become more popular in Guatemala, and it's now played by men and women alike. But basketball remains a very popular sport among the girls and women here!

I've been joining the Puerta Abierta band for practices after school! They are gearing up for next week's Independence Day parade, and a private concert afterward. It is the first time La Puerta Abierta has ever had a band, and for a bunch of 7 to 12-year-olds, it's really impressive. All credit to Pedro who is an amazingly dedicated music teacher and a great friend as well. Pedro claims to only know how to play bass and saxophone, but in the past two weeks, I've seen him play the guitar, ukulele, recorder, trumpet, and marimba. Pretty darn talented for a 22-year-old music teacher!

I've learned that Guatemala takes its coffee super seriously. Every restaurant has an espresso machine, and when people go out to eat, they will usually drink coffee after their meal. Santiago has several specialty coffee roasters who serve some of the best coffee I've ever had. One is Cooperative Co-Atítlan, and while most of their business consists of exporting coffee to high-end coffee shops in the U.S., they do open a small coffee shop every Saturday with great views of the lake and volcanos. These two pictures were taken from Cooperative Co-Atítlan no more than five minutes apart. Rain and thunderstorms come completely out of nowhere here during the rainy season, and the rain is biblical.