Guatemalan Families and Community

One thing that is very obvious is you stay with a Guatemalan family is that their idea of a family unit is very different from ours. In the upper middle class family we stayed with, the grandmother, her daughter, and her daughter's three kids all lived in the same household. The grandmother's son lives elsewhere with his wife, but eats at the house for almost all meals, and his 5 year old lives about half the time with him and half with the grandmother. In poorer and more rural households, it is apparently not uncommon to have up to 4 generations under one roof, sometimes with only a single room.

Some of this is definitely due to different levels of wealth. When you are very poor, combining living expenses with as many people as possible is a good idea. However, another contributing factor is a very different view on family and community than exists in the United States. In the United States, it is encouraged to strike out as independently as possible. Living with your parents past the age of 18 is generally looked down upon, and certainly once you have a steady income you are expected to be living on your own, likely in a different city.

Similarly, it is entirely common to travel from city to city as school and different jobs require, without strong regard for living near family or friends. This independence certainly has some value; there is a sense of freedom in being able to pack up your things and leap into the unknown, following a great opportunity. However, I think there is something we have lost as well. Here, there is a sense of roots, of belonging, and of continuity that I have never sensed anywhere I have lived.

The Value of Community

We are social beings, even those who like me are introverts at heart, and seek to connect with others who are like us. Witness the rapid growth of online social networks like Facebook; These tools offer nothing new; social networks have always existed. Instead, they bring the power of the internet to bear in allowing people to connect with less regard to distance, and have grown like wildfire. There is a strong desire to forge a sense of community, despite our tendency to spread ourselves so far apart.

It was our community that made our wedding such a memorable one; with friends and family providing the food, the cake, the wine, the Huppah (wedding canopy), the artwork on our Ketubah (wedding vows), and of course the ambiance, turning our special day into one we will remember forever.

And it was our community that made living where we did, in a single bedroom apartment in an expensive and not very interesting city near Stanford an amazing and wonderful experience. Our memories are filled with meals together and trips for milkshakes, crazy parties and mellow games of cards while sipping warm drinks, mornings spent sitting on the grass playing guitar, and making pancakes. All with members of our wonderful community.

Yet we too, leave it behind

Fully aware of how amazing our community is, we still left to travel to Guatemala, and we still are leaving it behind when we get back to move for T's graduate school. Not as far as we might have gone, and to the place where I went to school, so we have some remnants of community, but still leaving our bedrock behind.

It makes sense to do it. Graduate school is a necessary step upon the path T wants to walk, and we are by no means alone. This is the time in life when many people in the States scatter to pursue dreams, and we had already felt the fragmenting of our community as many friends left to pursue theirs. But it makes me wonder...

Will there ever be a time when we're all ready to settle together?

Will we ever be willing to say no to the opportunities that require traveling from each other, no to the things that 'make sense', and agree with each other to settle in one place, where we can live and grow and build a community together? It seems almost antithetical to the American way, to deliberately give up some possibilities, and be less independent, in order to continue living with the same people in the same place.

But it is a way that also calls to me. Another dream, this time one of interdependence instead of independence. Of deepening and lengthening relationships over years of time. Of teaching each other, and learning together. Of knowing that I can count on my friends to be there, and that they can count on me to be there, not just day after day but year after year. Of setting down roots, the kind of which seem natural in places like Guatemala, that you read about in stories where families have lived in the same homes for years, generation after generation of children playing with each other and growing up together.

We have gained some measure of independence in the United States, and I value that. But it seems in many ways we have given up community as it used to be known. And I wonder... was it worth it? And if not, can we get it back?

Leave me your thoughts in the comments!

Illegal immigration and the economy of Guatemala

The immigration debate in the United States always seems to dwell around prevention, walls, and how to keep people out. It is rare to hear any discussion about why all of these people might be willing to risk life and limb to make their way through deserts and passed armed guards to work illegally in the U.S. Why is it that there with a population of around 13 million people in Guatemala, there are an estimated 2 million more or 13% working illegally in the U.S?

The official minimum wage in Guatemala varies a bit by type of work, but sits around roughly 55 Quetzales ($6.87) per day. Of course, with an unemployment rate of over 30% many people are desparate enough for a job that they'll accept less than the official minimum. Spanish teachers at the various language schools, many of them holding graduate degrees, can make a bit more. They end up getting paid around 350-400Q per week when teaching one student, or closer to 700-800Q per week with two. Students receive 5 hours a day of individual instruction. Doing the calculation, this means a fully employed professional teacher, with graduate degrees, is earning around 160Q a day, or $20 for 10 hours of work.

By contrast, working illegally in the States in manual labor such as construction or in a restaurant might pay between $5 and $10 an hour, or $40 to $80 for an 8 hour day. Working the 10 or 12 hours that is more common, this can mean up to $100 to $120 a day. Thus by going to the States and working in manual labor, a professional from Guatemala can double to sextuple their daily income. Someone with less of a leg up at home sees an even larger improvement. Is it any wonder that they come?

Visiting various towns, while some are filled with poverty and crumbling buildings, a few have many larger houses and new construction. Upon asking about them, the answer is always the same: There are many people from this village working in the U.S. Illegal immigration represents the dream of a better life. Despite all of the hardships and the risks, the benefits are real and visible everywhere.

The demands of importing

Adding to the poor incomes is the problem that Guatemala has to import almost everything. Foods that are grown here (corn, beans, tropical fruits) and labor are very inexpensive, but everything else has the cost of travel, fuel and the poor exchange rate added upon it. Even things that are made locally like much clothing and housing require imported materials, and thus while cheaper in absolute terms than in the U.S, chew up a far greater portion of monthly income than they do for most U.S. families. Some things such as gasoline and cars are even more expensive here than in the States.

All of this importing also demands a constant stream of foreign currency. The largest source of this is money sent back from the U.S. to the families of those working illegally there. The second largest is tourism, and then followed by the exportation of various forms of fruits, vegetables, and of course coffee. When we visited a coffee plantation this weekend, we were shown how they filter out the different grades of coffee, and how the first 4 grades out of 7 are all for exportation only. Despite growing some of the best coffee in the world, the coffee most Guatemalan's drink is of the lowest quality.

Implications for U.S. Policy

To me, seeing this reality has humongous implications for U.S. immigration policy. The entire reason why the United States exists is because people in our history were willing to risk everything for the dream of a better life. So long as such poverty exists in our neighbors, it does not matter how many fences we build, how many struggling people die in the desert, or how many people we throw into prison for the crime of being poor. They will continue to come, so long as there is vaguest chance that they will get through and that they and their families will be able to live a better life.

If we really want to reduce the problem of illegal immigration, we need to help create opportunities for Guatemalans and other Latin Americans to improve their lives at home. We need to provide sane and understandable channels for those who still wish to immigrate to do so. And we need to cease our self-interested manipulations and intimidations of the governments of other countries when they implement policies that help their citizens at the expense of foreign companies.

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A sense of Guatemala

What does it feel like to live in Xela, Guatemala? What is the sense of the city, the region, and the country? When trying to communicate about our life and experiences abroad, these are extremely important questions, but the answers are difficult to describe in words, even to myself.

And yet I want to try. To try to give a little bit of insight into the experience, and what it is like to live here in this place, so different from where we came and yet still so human and recognizable. And so I will try; please let me know if it manages to communicate.

The People

We are giants.
During a lecture explaining the ancient Mayan view of the world, describing opposites, my teacher said 'If there is good, there is also evil. If there are tall people, there are also Guatemalans'. My wife T, a diminutive 5'2", is taller than almost all of the women and half of the men. I, a foot taller, am a lumbering giant. In the school, I have to duck my head when walking through a door by the stairs. In the markets, I am constantly brushing my head against the roofs of the tents. Through some combination of genetics and widespread malnutrition, Guatemalans are among the smallest people in the world.

Welcoming, patient, and honest.
Some places in the world, travelers who are struggling with the language are dealt with impatiently, quickly precipitating a search for an interpreter. Here, I have yet to meet someone who is impatient. Everyone we have interacted with has been happy to talk to us, patient with our struggles with the language, and willing to speak slowly with us, help us, and try their best to answer whatever questions we have. In addition, while we have heard warnings about some parts of Latin America, everyone we have met here has been scrupulously honest. I've carefully counted all change I've received, but not a single person has attempted to short change me. When we awkwardly tried to tip at the same time as paying in a restaurant the first night, the cashier was confused at our attempt to overpay and returned the extra money (it turns out, as far as we can tell, tipping is done only at the table). And as far as we can tell, in Guatemala the 'Gringo Tax' only exists in our poorer ability to bargain; starting prices for us are roughly the same as for the natives.

Curious, friendly, and polite.
When traveling on the bus, it is extremely common for a native to strike up a conversation with one or more of us or the other students, especially asking 'where are you from?', and 'where are you headed?'. While walking in the country, where we stand out even more than in the city, we receive stares, followed quickly by smiles, friendly waves, and a cheerful 'buenos dias' or 'buenos tardes'. In restaurants, it is the custom when leaving to walk around wishing everyone still eating 'buen provecho', or good appetite. In the house where we are staying, the inverse occurs: upon completing eating one rises with a polite 'gracias', answered by chorus of 'buen provecho'.

The City

Breathing is difficult.
The first thing you notice when arriving in the city is the air. It is dirty, thick with exhaust and smoke. There are few pollution laws here, and those that exist are generally not enforced. Many of the cars, and especially the buses and vans, belch great clouds of filthy exhaust as they struggle upon their way. It is extremely profitable for a young man willing to brave the journey to travel to the United States (generally illegally), purchase a car that cannot pass smog testing or safety validation for peanuts, and drive it down through Mexico to Guatemala to resell.

The streets.
Narrow, winding streets and even narrower sidewalks. With the exception of the main thoroughfares, the streets are one way, barely wide enough for that, and paved with cobblestones. The sidewalks, where they exist, are barely wide enough for two people to pass one another. They are often in poor repair, and also of random heights varying from barely off of the street to more than two feet in the air. However, street names and addresses are extremely well organized. Every city is arranged on a two dimensional grid of streets and avenues, each numbered. An address tells you not only which street it is on, but what the cross street is and which side of the street it is on. Once we've started to get to know the system, we barely need a map even for unfamiliar areas.

The buildings.
The city is dominated by low, brightly painted buildings made of concrete blocks. Many are topped with tin roofs, and those that are not often appear unfinished, with rods of metal sticking out from them, as if they were intended to be two stories but were never finished for lack of money. As you walk the streets, signs painted directly upon the walls of buildings scream out at you in often jarring color combinations, "Exclusive!", "Lowest Prices!", "Spanish Language School", "Internet Cafe", "House of God". Often the stores are smaller than a closet, filled with so many random types of things my wife T has dubbed them "random-ish-eterias". Contrasting with these low, generally dirty, and simple buildings are enormous, beautiful churches and cathedrals, several examples of old greek-style architecture (such as the Municipal Theatre, and the Temple Minerva), and a pair of modern malls.

The people.
In the city, there is an amazing mix of people, wearing everything from jeans and t-shirts, to well dressed gentlement with sombreros, to women wearing beautifully embroidered and colorful traditional Mayan garb. There are 21 different indigenous groups in Guatemala, each with their own versions of traditional garments, and while most of the 'better' (more official) jobs require modern clothing, it is extremely common to see women who are working as street vendors or just walking along wearing the traditional clothing.

The markets.
Complementing the malls and the store sprinkled everywhere are tremendous outdoor markets. The largest one in Xela, la Democracia, spans some 6ish blocks. One we visited in San Francisco el Alto, a nearby town, on Fridays takes over the entire city. Vendors sell food, clothing, electronics, shoes (for some reason, shoe shops and outdoor shoe vendors are EVERYWHERE in Xela), accessories, backpacks, rugs, and even (at least in S.F. el Alto) a variety of animals. You have to be a little careful what you buy; a lot of the stuff is really poor quality, but there are definitely some gems, and while the prepared street food is a little sketchy, the markets are a good place to buy ingredients for home prepared meals.

Transit

Omnipresent Public Transit.
We read before coming that Guatemala has little public transit. If you only include government run transportation in public transit, this might be correct, but if you expand it to include individual entrepeneurs driving others, it is everywhere in Guatemala. By far the most common way to get from place to place is to pay someone else to take you there, usually along with dozens of other people. In a country where a car can cost many years worth of wages, driving others for a living is extremely common, with tens of thousands providing transit within and between the cities. Those who can afford it buy an old schoolbus from the US, rework it with a new and more powerful engine, bigger tires, racks inside and on top of the bus for carrying stuff, and of course colorful decorations. These buses then run routes all around the country, picking up passengers in every town. Those who cannot afford such an investment but want to do the same buy vans or pickups, and do the same. Within the city, transport is between .5 and 1.5 Quetzales, or between 6 and 18 cents. Getting to nearby towns usually costs between 3 and 8 Quetzales, or $0.35 to $1.00.

Operations.
We have not yet ridden in a pickup, but the buses and vans tend to operate in relatively the same manner. Each has a driver and an assistant. The assistant jumps out at every stop, shouting the destination of the bus and trying to recruit passengers. Once the vehicle is on its way, the assistant works his or her (though I've only seen one woman in this role so far) way through all of the passengers, collecting money. These buses can get packed! In the US, I've occasionally heard the description 'Mexican Style' for cars that are overfilled, but whoever coined that phrase must have never been further south than Mexico, because it seems to dominate this country as well. The other day I saw 26 people in a bus designed for 16, with people crammed in the seats, sitting and standing on the floor, and the assistant leaning out the side door holding it closed. Luckily, it's impossible to drive very rapidly here, given the quality of the roads.

The Countryside

All around.
One doesn't have to look far to get out of the city and into the countryside. Last weekend we hiked from the central park to a local attraction called 'Los Vahos' (The Steam). The attraction consists of natural steam vents, which someone has constructed a series of bathhouses on top of and now charges for the use of the resulting saunas. While a number of our friends went for the saunas, my wife and I just went to the walk. Within 20 minutes we were above the city looking down on it, and for the remainder of the hour and a half walk were transiting through fields, past sheep and cows, and through some beautiful mountain landscape.

Volcanic.
Guatemala is in one of the most seismologically active areas in the world. We can see several dormant volcanos (one particularly striking) from the city itself, and there are vantage points not far from Xela that allow you to see the smoke and activity of more active volcanoes. This weekend we hiked up one nearby dormant volcano whose crater is filled with a lagoon considered sacred by the Mayan people, Laguna Chicabal. In case the existence of the crater wasn't enough to remind us of the volcanic nature of the mountain, the ground was covered with small pieces of pumice.

Green and varied.
We have seen fields of a myriad of different types of crops, though the largest have been corn and potatoes. We've also seen a variety of different types of forest, ranging from more temperate-seeming forests similar to the deciduous trees you might find in Northern California, to the mossy, cool rainforest we encountered on the slopes of Chicabal. We have yet to descend to the hotlands and jungle along the coast or to the northeast, but I anticipate them being different again and fascinating.

Living

Planning around water.
The tap water in Guatemala is not as well sanitized as in the US, and unless you want to meet with the scourge of travelers (traveler's diarrhea), it is advised to drink only boiled or purified water as much as possible. Purified water (agua pura) is available in stores everywhere, and you can get it delivered in bulk as well, but the cost is not inconsequential for most families. Hence, living as guests, we try to drink water from the family only at mealtimes and the rest of the time buy bottles or fill our bottles at the school (which has explicitly approved of this practice). While the time and money are not great for us, needing to plan for having pure water around means that especially early on it was always in our consciousness, where and when we were next going to get water.

The toilets.
Public restrooms almost don't exist in Guatemala, and where you can find a restroom while out and about (restaurants, etc) they are unlikely to have toilet paper available. Carrying your own paper is a quickly learned survival skill. At large affairs like the market in San Francisco el Alto, there were toilets, but they cost 1 quetzal to use and they would hand you a strip of toilet paper going in. In addition, the sewer system in Guatemala cannot handle paper products or other such things going down the toilet. What this means is that every restroom has a trash can, where you throw the toilet paper after using it. I'll leave you to conclude what this does for the smell of the restrooms... luckily it's not quite as bad as you'd expect. Not quite, but almost.

Showers.
My first shower in Guatemala was in the hotel we stayed at our first night in Xela. The hostess had proudly pointed out that the shower had 'agua caliente', hot water. However, when I tried to shower the next morning, it was freezing cold. I barely managed to stay in it long enough to rinse off and do a bad job of shaving, before toweling off as quickly as possible. It was only later that I learned the magic of hot water in Guatemala. Guatemalan showers, when heated, use electric heaters that flash-heat the water as it passes through them. If you can look up in the shower, you can see them, usually haphazardly installed with wires coming into them from above. This has two consequences: One, if you try fiddling around with the showerhead while taking shower you can get shocked. And two, if you want hot water you need to limit the amount of water flowing through the heater to an amount it can heat. Being trained in the US, I had assumed that if the water wasn't hot I needed to run more water (it's how hot water works in the US!), but by doing so I was sacrificing any chance that the water would be even luke warm. Now I have learned, and by limiting the flow to a moderate dribble, can achieve even steaming hot showers.

Wrapup

I've only just brushed the surface of what it has been like living in Guatemala for the past two weeks. I'm sure I've left out many details, some of which are important, but I hope that this post helps communicate a little bit about what life has been like for us here. Please let me know in the comments if you enjoyed this post, or if you have any questions.

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Safe Arrival in Guatemala

Our grand adventure began simply. On Saturday we took an afternoon flight to the Houston airport. We traveled light, with only our backpacks, and skipped the long line for checking luggage to pass through security in no more than 15 minutes. The flight was fairly short (around 3 hours), and more or less uneventful.

We arrived in the Houston airport, bought dinner, and changed a little bit of money from dollars into Guatemalan Quetzales at exhorbitant rates (the official exchange rate is roughly 8 to 1, but in the airport they not only charged a large fee, but also only gave an exchange of around 6.5 to 1). Regardless, we thought it was important to have some native currency upon arrival, and changed $100.

We slept that night in a hotel just south of the Houston airport, and at 6:15 arose to catch our morning flight. I slept well for the first part of the night, but from roughly 4:00am onwards was tossing and turning from the excitement and anxiety of the prospects for the morning. We planned our trip so as to arrive in Guatemala in the morning, so that we could take a bus during the day to our final destination of Xela (Quetzaltenango), and not have to stay overnight in Guatemala City. While the city of Xela is reasonably safe, Guatemala City has seen rising violence in recent years, and it is recommended not to drive through the country at night.

Guatemala City

Our flight to Guatemala City was extremely empty; perhaps a quarter full, and only 2.5 hours long. Every announcement was made both in English and in Spanish. Upon arrival in Guatemala City, we transited quickly through customs and out to the open street. Unlike airports in the US or elsewhere I have visited, there were no shops to be seen, and while there was a small information desk it was not manned. On the street there were people awaiting the arrivals, and some men in uniforms were happy to escort us to where taxis were waiting.

I was happy that my Spanish, though very rusty, was good enough to both communicate that we wanted to get to the Galgos bus station (Galgos is a company similar to Greyhound), verify that the taxi driver knew where it was, and agree on a price ahead of time. We drove through the city, through twisting one way streets, past both broken down buildings and fancy architecture, new cars and old clunkers, and of course the many multicolored ´chicken buses´: repainted, reworked US school buses that are omnipresent in Guatemala.

While the Galgos buses are considered somewhat safer, and reserve a seat per person, the chicken buses (not what Guatemaltecos call them, but how foreigners seem to always describe them) are less expensive, take all comers no matter how packed they already are, and go pretty much anywhere. Within the cities, there are also ´microbuses´ (both smaller buses and minivans) which will provide a lift for a small fee, as well as pickups which will do the same.

Guatemala City is a microcosm of the contradiction and contrasts that are everywhere in this third world country. Intermingled with grand architecture and the occasional modern mall, there is extreme poverty and glimpses back into history. It is not uncommon to see large open markets filled with street vendors, and yet there are also shops and skyscrapers like you could find in any US city.

However, Guatemala City is also the most dangerous part of the country, and I was relieved when our bus arrived and we embarked.

The Bus Ride

Our bus was an extremely old, repainted Greyhound bus, with broken down seats. Just as we were getting on, we met another gringo, a woman from Oakland who was also traveling to Xela to study Spanish (though at a different school). Still being very uncomfortable with Spanish, it was nice to have someone else aboard who spoke English and with whom we could converse.

Before leaving town, the bus took a roundabout route throughout Guatemala City, stopping at what seemed like every bus stop in the city. At each stop, the driver´s assistant would jump off the bus, shouting out our destination and trying to herd as many people as possible who might be going even vaguely in that direction. After some time that seemed like forever but was probably closer to an hour or an hour and a half, we actually left the city.

Travel in Guatemala takes a while. While Xela is no more than 50 or 60 miles from Guatemala City, the route is winding, mountainous, and in many places under construction. There were portions of highway where both directions of traffic were routed throught the same side, and others that weren´t even paved. In addition, in each town along the way we stopped to drop off passengers and pick up new ones. It was extremely entertaining to watch the driver´s assistant courting new passengers, often trying to convince them to take our bus instead of a competing chicken bus, and helping them with their stuff.

At some stops, vendors came aboard to sell various types of food and drink. Their method of selling was simple: walk down the bus, calling out what they had to sell as loudly and rapidly as possible. Sometimes, they would ride along with us for a stop or two, sometimes even between towns, especially if there were many takers. At that point, they would disembark, presumably to get on another bus going the other way and sell more.

Arriving in Xela

All in all, it took roughly 5 hours on the bus to arrive at Xela. Our school, Asociación Pop Wuj is right around the corner from the Galgos bus station, though far from most of the other busses. We walked the short distance, only to discover the door closed and locked (They close at 7:00).

Kindly, they had left a note that not only apologized for no longer being there, but recommended a hotel two blocks down. We made our way there and despite our broken Spanish succeeded in renting a room for 95 Quetzales each (roughly $12 a person). We put our stuff down, and went out to find something to eat and drink. After 5 hours on the bus, we were not only hungry, we were extremely thirsty, and almost out of water! (Tap water in Guatemala is not safe for consumption, at least by us gringos whose bodies don´t yet know how to deal with the microbes).

We had noticed a ´Chinese´ food place across the street from where the school was, and after some deliberation, we decided to not try exploring a strange city at night, and instead to eat there. The place was so empty we were worried they weren´t open, but they happily accepted us, and served us purified bottled water (agua pura) and some fairly bland but edible Chinese food.

Having eaten, we returned to our hotel room and crashed before 9:00pm. Traveling is exhausting, and Xela has the thin air one would expect from a city located a stunning 7655 feet above sea level.

New Beginnings

The next morning, we gathered our stuff and walked to the school. We arrived in the middle of the beginning-of-week schedule explanation (given in Spanish, and translated by a student into English), which was then followed by a new student orientation for us and the other 6 new students. The teacher giving the orientation offered to give it in ´buen español, o mal inglés´ (good Spanish, or bad English). We opted for good Spanish, and he explained extremely slowly and clearly a number of things about the school, the country, and the families we would be staying with.

We are living with a middle-class family roughly two blocks from the school. Under the same roof are our hostess (Celeste), her daughter Rosa, and her daughter´s three children (aged 15, 13, and 10). Her son Alex lives nearby, and is at the house for almost all meals. Alex´s 5-year-old daughter seems to sleep roughly half the time at our house and half the time with her parents.

For our Spanish schooling, we spend 5 hours a day in one-on-one lessons with a teacher, as well as doing some homework, and of course speaking in Spanish both with our host family and anyone we interact with outside the school. Unlike the more touristy city of Antigua, almost no one in Xela speaks English, so we end up practicing a lot!

Future Writing

I feel like I have barely scratched the surface of things to talk about, and yet this post is already probably longer than any other I´ve written. It's proven harder than I expected to find the time to write every day, especially since getting computer or internet access requires either competing for one of the two at the school or going to one of the many internet cafes.

Adding to this difficulty have been adjusting to the altitude (The first week, we were asleep by 8:30 or 9:00 every day), the place (while Xela is a pretty chill city, things are extremely different than anywhere I´ve lived before), and the climate (it rains for several hours every day; HARD!).

I hope to write about life in Xela, but also the things I´m learning about the culture and history, not only of modern Guatemalans, but also of the Mayans from whom 65% of Xela residents are decended. Adding to this, there is the recent political scandal that everyone is talking about.

It's becoming easier to find time, but we´ll see how it goes. Hope to write again soon.


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Leaving Today

So this is it. Today we leave for our Guatemalan adventure. We fly this afternoon to Houston, sleep there overnight, and in the morning on to Guatemala City. From there we will take a bus for the 5 or 6 hours it takes to get to Xela (shel-lah), the 2nd largest city in Guatemala and our final destination.

Xela is the more common name for the city of Quetzaltenango. The name Xela comes from Xelaju', the old Mayan name for the city, which according to wikipedia was derived from "Xe laju' noj" meaning "under ten mountains". The city is in the western highlands of Guatemala, surrounded by volcanos and near to the deepest lake in Central America, described by Lonely Planet Guatemala as one of the most beautiful in the world, Lake Atitlan.

We are looking forward to studying Spanish, living with a local family, learning about the culture, meeting people, hiking, and otherwise learning what it is like to live in a place so different from where we have lived. We will be there for three months, returning at the end of July.

Reflection

One thing I've noticed as we've gotten closer and closer to the trip is how my focus and ability to write, meditate, etc has varied inversely to my stress and antsiness about the impending change. As I get antsier and antsier, my attention span shrinks and I find myself clinging to distractions more and more. In the last day or two, I have regressed on my political blogs bad habit, reading a number of articles about Specter's switch and Justice Souter's retirement. I also have had difficulty meditating, and gotten barely any writing done.

I think this is a good reminder that the idea that stress is a good thing for productivity is misleading. It's common to hear this said as an argument for having deadlines even for things that don't have any external pressure. The idea is that by adding urgency, you make yourself or the people working for you more productive. While this may be true for non-creative things (we got a heck of a lot of errands done yesterday), for creative things stress is inhibitory.

This also implies that procrastinating creative projects is a double whammy. You feel guilty for delaying, and if there is a deadline as you get closer and closer you not only get more stressed, but that actively inhibits your ability to work on the project and makes you more likely to procrastinate. Yikes! I don't think this will help me remember to timebox or use some of the other tricks I've found, but it should provide some additional motivation!

Going Forward

I'm going to try to use this blog to write updates about our time in Guatemala, as well as writing other things that are on my mind. We don't know much about what our situation will be like in Xela, but we do know there are plenty of internet cafe's, so I should be able to post reasonably regularly. The next post you see should be coming from Guatemala! Hasta luego!

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Bring me that horizon

Thats what a ship is, you know. Its not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails... thats what a ship needs. But what a ship is ... is freedom. -Captain Jack Sparrow

We bought backpacks yesterday. Real, heavy-duty, go camping with, can-carry-everything-we're-taking-to-Guatemala style backpacks. The ones we bought are large and sturdy enough to carry 30 pounds of stuff, but strap down small enough to be taken as carry-on when flying. They were pretty expensive, but as we were buying them, I started thinking about the implications, and got really excited.

The next time someone invites us to go backpacking, the barriers to doing so will be so much smaller. Instead of having to figure out where to rent, borrow, or maybe buy a backpack, we'll have them already. We know they fit, and that they remain comfortable, and we'll already know how to pack them.

Every time I go traveling in the future, instead of having to deal with an awkward and unwieldy suitcase, I'll be able to just pack up my backpack and carry everything on my back. This means that upon arrival I'll be less dependent on wheeled transport, less dependent on having a place immediately to drop off my bags, and more free to wing it and explore.

Freedom

I've been getting more and more interested in other cultures and history for several years now, but I've had difficulty actually getting myself to leave my comfort zone and travel abroad. You no longer need a ship to see the world, travelling to almost anywhere on earth now costs less than a year's savings.

Unfortunately, there are still numerous barriers to the freedom of exploring it, most of them self imposed. My trip to Israel last summer (first international travel since I was leaving High School) started to break down the internal barriers, and as I've gotten more comfortable with our planned Guatemala trip I've also started daydreaming more and more about additional trips to locations around the globe. Owning a backpack is one more barrier down.

We'll see how things go. I'm sure this trip will stretch me not only in the ways I'm anticipating, but in others I have yet to imagine. But I'm starting to lose more and more of my internally created barriers to freedom, and more and more eager to travel beyond my current horizons.

Liked this? Looking for more like this? You might like

• A Travel Philosophy
• Transitions and Groundlessness

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Transitions and Groundlessness

My wife T and I are in the process of packing up our entire apartment in preparation for 3 months in Guatemala, followed by moving to San Diego. T is starting graduate school in the fall, and we decided to take the transition as an opportunity to live abroad for a while. We'll be in the city of Quetzaltenango (commonly known as Xela), first taking language classes and then volunteering with a women and children's shelter.

Thus, for the month of April, I am working only two days a week, and we're going through everything in our household deciding whether to put it into a storage box or a donation box. This has me feeling somewhat groundless, and as I tend to whenever I'm at loose ends, I'm now thinking about all of the various business and nonprofit ideas I'd like to try starting. The problem with this is that most of them are programming related, and we're about to spend 3 months in a 3rd world country with intermittent internet access and no computers of our own. This makes it slightly less than the ideal time to start a web business or major project.

It is a relief, though, that the burned out feeling where I was no longer having energy for my own side projects, thinking about startup ideas, or writing is starting to go away. It turns out working 9+ hours a day at a startup, commuting 3 hours a day on public transit, and trying to plan a wedding and a trip to Guatemala all at once reduces my ability for spontaneous creativity. With the commuting and working happening only twice a week, the wedding behind us (it went wonderfully!), and the trip close to happening, now I'm itching to start working on new projects.

The one thing I think I can start now that I should be able to keep going is regular blogging. Quetzaltenango has a fairly good supply of internet cafes, so while I won't have a development environment for programming projects, I should be able to regularly check email and blog.

I'll use this extra time and pent up energy as an opportunity to start a habit of blogging, so check in regularly (or subscribe using the links on the left) for updates on life in Guatemala, musings on productivity, mindfulness, and other random thoughts.