This blog is started from my bed here in my host-family's house. this is because I started getting sick on Saturday. Sunday, I woke up because of stomach pain. It was so bad that i was crying in the fetal position on my hotel room bed. My only consolation was the Holy Spirit. A couple hours later we had to get on the bus for our 8-hour ride back to Xela (form San Cristobal de las Casas. I'll tell you about all that later). It was hard to get out of bed and onto the bus. Needless to say, it was a tough ride, especially in the really hot area around the border. I got home around six and slept for a couple of hours. {WARNING: graphic details ahead} I puked twice at like 8 and 1am. It was only green. I guess that's what happens when you have nothing in your stomach. Our nurse told me it was bile. I seem to remember a high school bio class where we learned about the gal bladder and bile. I think I remember that correctly... Anyway, I also had a black stool. Our nurse, who also happens to be the wife of our director, told me that it could be because of a bacterial infection and that I may have been bleeding from it. Scary, I know. Although judging by how much it hurt overall, I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if i had bled. I called Nicole Bach this morning to tell her I wouldn't be able to go on our skype date. I guess I kinda stood her up. haha...okay, but seriously, she was pretty worried (with good reason) and didn't want to talk for too long. I told her I'd take care of myself. I started taking my antibiotics today, Monday, after I could tell that the water and crackers were staying down. I felt a whole lot better and slept four hours (9-1). I woke up and kept eating crackers and drinking water and gatorade. A little later I had a vegetable soup and toast. It was yummy! I tried to go back to sleep later in the afternoon, but it didn't really work out cuz my stomach was starting to hurt more again. I thought it was weird that my stomach hurt more when I was lying down. I decided to sit up, and felt like a million bucks, relatively. Anyway, I had more soup for dinner, vegetables and bow-tie pasta, with toast and tea. I took some tylenol before bed to sleep with less pain. It's not over, but it's a whole lot better.
The last time I wrote it was less about what I had done and more about what I was thinking about. I guess that's just what I needed at that point. This time around, I'm happy to give you some good details.
I have completed two weeks now of university classes and spanish classes: university on tues and thurs mornings and spanish on mon, tues, and wed afternoons. I have volunteer work at an orphanage on wednesday mornings and thursday afternoons (if I go both times).
My Mayan culture class is great. It's been a bit general, but we did get to grind maiz (corn) the traditional way, on rocks. That was a good time, not easy. Maiz is absolutely the center of their culture, so it's good that we've spent two or three classes on it.
Liberation Theology has been amazing! We are going through the intellectual roots of it right now, and it's soooo interesting, to me. I won't bore you with economics and all this other stuff, but it's nice to see the secular and religious pretexts. I'm very sad that I missed class.
Mayan culture is super easy, and Liberation Theology is not one of the hardest classes I've taken. I'm feeling really good right now about the amount of work I have to put into my school work right now.
I've had a bit of a harder time with my spanish classes. It's a motivation thing, without a doubt. I'm with a really cool teacher, Edy. I kinda get the feeling that I'm just not a very good student. I don't really know what it is, but we'll see how it goes.
My volunteering has been great. I've done a lot of entertaining with groups from our spanish school. Musical chairs, potato sack races, piñatas, and hot dogs. The other day we cleaned up the playground. It was Ash Wednesday, and the day before is what they call Carnival Day. It's kinda like Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras. Their favorite thing to do on this particular day is to buy egg shells filled with confetti and smash them on their friend's, or a stranger's, head. Thus, there were millions of these little things in the synthetic grass under the playground equipment. Needless to say it was hard to keep the attention of the kids. We finished up and kicked around the soccer ball for a while until it was time for "class." I only say that because it's more like the teacher giving each kid some homework. I think they also go to a public school, and I'm not sure what that's like. I helped a girl do some coloring. She really wanted my attention, so when I tried to spread out the help she started yelling at me, in a nice way. Ha, we'll see if I feel up to going this week. I've missed two days of classes.
I have been going out less and less these days. I find that it gives me more time to do the things I want to do. I haven't really enjoyed dancing as much as I did earlier. That being said, I did go to a concert the first thursday night that I was back. If anyone recognizes The Buena Vista Social Club, the main guy started his own band called Buena Vista de Corazon. It was really great music, and I enjoyed that thoroughly. I also went out the next night because a big group from our spanish school was graduating and I choose to enjoy the night with them. It was decent overall until a good friend of mine and I decided to stop waiting for some hip-hop at the disco and just rip it up anyway. So we did. We both don't really like to dance with pre-planned steps (it cramps the creativity), so we didn't. We just went out there and did whatever we wanted. It was the best time I've ever had dancing. It kinda looked a little like salsa, but it was nothing but creative fun. Anyway, that friend is gone now. Her name is Steph, and she's off to travel the rest of Central America. Best wishes to you!
Anyway, this past week was a little short because we left for San Cristobal on thursday morning. The weekend was relaxing and I prepared well for the classes that week. Not much was different in my schedule from the week before. My highlight was that I got to see Nicole when we talked on Skype. finally! It's really goo to talk with her. I guess I haven't talked much about her on my blog here. You'll have to wait. I'll write about it soon.
We left early on thursday in a fairly small bus for the 26 of us. We got to the border about 4 hours later and got off and back on the bus about four times in 30 minutes for various things. It was really hot there. We got into San Cristobal late and found an ATM to get some pesos. Apparently the exchange rate just dropped from 10:1 to 15:1, pesos to dollars. It's really horrible for Mexico, sadly, but it was good for us. The prices hadn't had a chance to go up to respond to the switch. Some of us went out and had a great dinner. The next day, we walked around. I really enjoyed the city. It's got a number of large plazas and parks. Pretty much everyone made their way over to the market. (Some girls spent 1000 pesos.) I decided to just get a couple of things. I ended up getting some sweet pants and one of those scarfs that I feel is most recognized as Palestinian, but I'm sure it's worn around the middle east. I got a red and white one, and a lot of other people decided to get them too, in other colors.
The next day, we had a buffet at the hotel for breakfast (this is where I started feeling a bit bad, although it could have been anytime). We got on the bus and headed into the mountains. This was my favorite part of my time in Guate yet. We made our way into the Zapatista-controlled area of Chiapas with our guide and we stopped at a meeting-place for the Zapatistas. It's not really a town, just a place with their "government," schools, cooperatives, and a little store. We were greeted by people with scarves over their faces. At first, it's intimidating, but it became more comfortable quickly. They asked why we were there, and we told them because we wanted to learn about them. They let us write up some questions to be given to the "junta" which is basically their government, kinda. Ha, anyway, we waited outside the little building for a while. I guess they were looking at our questions and maybe finishing other business. This was the first place we saw them with the black ski masks which they're most well-known for. That took a little getting used to as well. See, they're still in rebellion against the Mexican government. They're still all the capitalism and globalization stuff. We were invited into their little office and they began to answer our questions. They were fairly personable people and joked a bit about how little spanish they knew. They answered our questions as best as they could, about things like the role of women, their goals, hope, among other things. That took almost two hours, and then they let us take pictures. They will not let us take pictures of anyone there without their bandanas or masks on. Outside the office, we did not take pictures of anyone, but I was able to get a picture with the people inside. Otherwise we took pictures of the amazing murals on the sides of the buildings. I bought a couple of bandanas, a shirt, stickers, and a poster that says "another world is possible."
Later, we went to another village that is totally autonomous from the Catholic Church and has been for 30 years. It's a completely indigenous village and they have made the church into their Mayan temple. It was one of the things here that I'm still not sure how I feel about it. From my perspective, they treat the Catholic saints like Mayan gods because they pray to them for certain things. Jesus is not the centerpiece. John the Baptist is. They still practice baptism, but almost nothing else in the Catholic tradition. They come personally or as a family with a Shaman and candles, and maybe some soda or water or alcohol. The Shaman leads them in prayer. This is the place where they use turkeys (maybe some people have heard about that). It's part of a tradition where they walk around the person with it and somewhere along the line end up killing the turkey there inside the building. Anyway, we couldn't take any pictures because they believe that it takes the soul of whatever is in the picture. The place had no lighting, just thousands of candles, all over the place.
By this point, I was feeling pretty uncomfortable. I thought it was nausea from the bus ride. We got back to the hotel and I face-planted on my bed and passed out. Later on, I woke up and wrote a couple of emails. I went to sleep that night thinking that I was alright. The next morning we were to go back to Xela. I decided that I wanted to take a shower so I set my alarm early, 7:30. I woke up at 6:30 with horrible stomach pain. I tried to shower, but I didn't have the energy to do any of the cleaning, just stood there under the water. When I figured I couldn't do it anymore, I dried off and got in bed. I had a bit of diarrhea sometime that morning, and I ended up just shivering and hurting a lot in bed until about 9:30 when we left.
I prayed a lot during this whole thing. It was truly the only thing that made me feel better. A better way to say that is the Holy Spirit was my only comfort. I couldn't have done anything to make myself feel better. I've heard in the past that the suffering are the closest to God. After that, I have a much better understanding of that idea. I don't know how to explain it, but God is really right there wanting to heal us, wanting to make everything better. Most of all, God wanted to be right there with me, and He was. I cried, and it was mostly because of this fact, not the pain in my stomach.
I need to say a huge THANK YOU to all the people who took care of me somewhere along the way, Terese, Doug, Brianna, Nicole M, Maria, Shannon, Ana, Markie, Gloria, Lily, Doña Santos, and Nicole Bach on the phone. :) You all have been sincerely appreciated! ...even though I may not have been able to show it yet.
I have plans to go meet up with the ABE group from CSB Campus Ministry that is down here this week. I'm trying to leave thursday afternoon. We'll see how healthy I am by then, and who else is going to come with me. It would be really great to see them and what they're doing, not to mention that I haven't been to lake Atitlan yet!
In other news, I'm still not sure what I'm doing this summer. Originally, I wanted to stay home in Denver and work on an organic farm. Now, I'm planning on changing my ticket to return the 15th of May to Minnesota to go to Nicole's graduation party. So we're kind of together, kinda not, although not looking for anyone else. We're figuring all that out. All in due time. If I do that, I don't see a good reason to fly back to Denver if I'm gong to try to be her date to a friend's wedding in the middle of June. Also, she'll be taking a road-trip out to Denver a bit after that, so it'd be nice to come back at that time. She's going to Japan for a year in the middle of July to teach english. I figure I'd like some time back home before I leave for nine months to Africa. Home is starting to become more and more comfortable for me. I am trying to save at least some money this summer, and I don't know who's going to hire me from the middle of May to the middle of June in MN, but I really would like to work at the Common Grounds Garden up at CSB or again at SJ Abbey Woodworking. It would be the best of both worlds to spend a bit of Nicole's last months with her before she goes to Japan, work and be around great people, and still be able to come back home for a while. I'm praying for direction on this one. Pray for me too.
Oh and I'm shaving... soon, maybe...
God bless you all! I hope this blog finds you with all my blessings and love. Keep living life! May God's grace find you always!
-----------------------------------------
"What would you do if you knew you could not fail?"
-----------------------------------------
