Guatemala Day 1

Everyone arrived in Guatemala today and we took a private bus from Guatemala City to the 2nd largest city, Quetzaltenango (more commonly known as Xela). I apologize for all the blurry car photos I'll be posting. I wish I knew how to capture these beautiful moments better...

Most important elements of this picture: Don Lucas's (one of our drivers) forehead in the rearview mirror and part of Ellie's (our group's coordinator from Somos Hermanos) head seen from behind. These two dealt with answering/translating my many many many questions about Guatemala's politics, history, health system, etc. for the entire 4 hour car ride.

Leaving Guatemala City and quickly entering the rural landscape

Random landscape 1: one of the few non-blurry photos I have

Random landscape 2: because horses

At one point, we came across a little artisan market on the side of the road so we decided to stop and take a gander...

Clay things, etc.

Obligatory photo of elephant thingamajiggers I found in the market!

Some of us wandered off a little bit and found this awesome view of the hillside!

They literally farm every square foot of land possible. I find it so mind-boggling that this super fertile country has the 4th highest rate of malnutrition in the world. That's the amount of corruption and exploitation there is here...

So this is an example of some campaign publicity. Because of the high rate of illiteracy in the country, political parties (not a dual party system like in USA btw... there can be upwards of 10 parties in each presidential race) are each associated with a color and a simple drawing (I'll try to get a better picture later). Lider is one party (red) and UNE is another (green) - they seem to be the biggest ones - at least in the areas we've visited - because they're the only ones I've seen. But according to the lovely Don Lucas and Ellie, most political parties are on the right half of the spectrum and there's only one that's on the left at all: URNG. URNG is basically a union of all the different guerrilla groups that existed during the 36-year Civil War (more on this later)

And, 4 hours of politics later... we are entering Xela!

My first glimpse of the city

As soon as we got into the city center, we were dropped off at our Spanish school and picked up by our host families. Nidia is Elizabeth and my host mom but I'm not entirely sure who's who in the family because there are so many people! It also didn't help that we weren't properly introduced to anyone because the other Somos Hermanos* kids (the six-monthers, as we call them) were having a huge dinner party. Basically, Gabby and James are recent grads who live with the same host family, but they invited all the other students before they left for El Salvador for two weeks. Gabby cooked us an Italian feast (cheese and prosciutto followed by spaghetti and meatballs and stuffed mushrooms then homemade tiramisu and two types of apple pie a la mode. Everything was delicious and I wanted to talk to all the six-monthers about their program but alas, I retired early due to my introversion and tiredness from traveling.

*You can learn more about Somos Hermanos here, but in short, it's an immersion program in Guatemala that helps participants not only build their Spanish language skills but also gain a deeper understanding of cultural sensitivity and humility, especially as health care providers. Fun fact: it was founded by 2 USC students under Dr. Quinn's guidance (who also happens to be the professor who runs this PWP as well as PWP Oxford!)

For now, enjoy the view from the roof of my homestay!