A new generation of Hibiscus Lovers

12 days till Seattle

Hola Amigos! Only 12 days until I fly home. It is hard to believe I have been in Guatemala for 2 months, but on the other hand... it is hard to believe I haven´t been here longer! The last few weeks have been busy with construction on the site and weekend trips to El Salvador and Lake Atitlan. Both trips provided much needed relaxation and sunshine. All is well, I have been a touch under the weather and I realized the other day that not only can I not speak Spanish, but I can´t speak English either. Forgive me when I get home as I have formally adopted choppy Spanglish as my form of verbal communication.

The site is almost finished... bruised, tired, a touch sick to the stomach (we think that maybe we shouldn´t have swam in Lk. Atlitlan and utterly happy... we will be done by Friday for a dedication on Saturday. It is crazy to sit back and look at what we have built. One of our group quotes sums it all up ¨It´s almost like we know what we are doing!¨

So, I hopefully a few pictures actually posted and below is a description of the posted images.

The photo with the cross and the city below if the view of Antigua from a hill above the city. We hiked up there (wisely accompanied by the tourist police) It was a gorgeous day... the view of the city was spectacular!

One photo is a shot of our 1st stop on the chicken bus route. As you can clearly see, this school bus was already full and about to get a great deal fuller as we headed back towards Antigua from Guatemala City. Our ¨gringo bus¨are the volunteers for Camino Segura which are a mix of teachers, social workers, various other volunteers and our UW group.

The next photo demonstrates how red John and my hair can get in the setting sunlight of Lk. Atitlan.

Next, the giant monkey is my lil touch to the site which a creation is two pieces of 3/4 inch all pieces of plywood cut with a jigsaw. The monkey is actually hanging from the second floor of the¨play structure¨. More pics on that one later.

The other pics are me in front of the casita that I helped build and design (notice the hibiscus cut out). I don´t actually like the drill that much, but si levi... it was the only tool around when the TA came around with the camera.

The group shot is us mixing concrete Guatemalan style... which means combining sand, gravel and cement into a pile on the ground and mixing together prior to dumping the mix into small wheel-barells. It is back-breaking work.

The photo of the man chilling on a lounge is our dear professor, Daniel Winterbottom chilling by the pool in El Salvador. He loves tanning. I lecture often about the health benefits of spf 70. My words of wisdom fall on deaf ears with Daniel.

I think that is it for now... this is probably my last post as we are about to get even busier finalizing the site, traveling a bit in Guatemala (and maybe Honduras) and attending dedications, dinners, ¨we are finished parties¨ etc.

See you all soon!!! Cheers! KP

Salud, Dinero, Amore

(As always... please excuse grammatical errors... I just can{t seem to get this 3rd world technology to work for me). I am halfway through this experience as of today. What an experience it has been! We are working 6 days a week right now and we are one tired group of design/builders. Luckily we have had a chance to play a little as well. We had yesterday off to enjoy Antiguq and the morning included actual real eggs, real guatemalan coffee and real bread. By the word ...real, I mean things that actually were eggs, coffee and bread... not a watered down, dried out versions of all typical of Guate. It was a beatiful day in Antigua... we were lucky as it has been really cold at times.

Anyway... hopefully a few of these pictures actually upload. And I will describe briefly and you will just have to guess which ones are which.

First... we experienced a ridiculous down-pour a few weeks ago which actually completely flooded the street in front of our house. Somehow this tiny tuk tuk (the best form of a taxi in the world) made it up the street. The floods have subsided and we have had two weeks of sunshine, but it can be really cold and windy some days whereas we wear every piece of clothing we thought we would not need in Central America.

The next pictures includes me poking a stick into (mysteriously hard) flowing lava up at Vulcan Pacaya. The lava was flowing around us as we ate lunch and roasted marshmellows on the lava. No joke. Very cool experience. We watched Vulcan Fuego puff smoke and steam yesterday while the sun set. It is odd to be surrounded by active volcanoes on a daily basis and that it is completely normal.

There is a picture of our final design and the status of the play structure as of Thursday. It actually already looks quite a bit different as of today after by today (it is Monday). I spent Saturday designing and building an 8 foot monkey that will be hanging from one of the decks and will act as a crawl structure for the kids. Four more weeks of construction! I only have one minor injury at this point (other than bruises) which included slicing my finger open while reaching for a nail with my stupid knife blade not complete closed.

My favorite day in Guate was Nov. 1st for All Saints Day for the Kite Festival. My roommate Hilary and I were the only two females that helped pull a kite that day. It was a blast. It is oddly exhilerating to hurdle graves while pulling giant paper kites. I could write an entire book on this day, but will save you the reading. All I can say, I will never look at Nov. 1st or cemetaries the same way... The spinning wheel is a ferris wheel that was spinning out of control just outside of the cemetary.

We also went white water river rafting (my first time ever and all the directions were in spoken in Spanish - a tad scary at first, but in the end was so cool)... it was a fun experience. There is nothing like doing unsafe sporting events in a developing country! At least we had helemts and life vests from the 1980s.

The last big event was the election that took place last weekend. The green guy won. The entire election was described by the orange guy and the green guy (even the Guatemalans referred to the two canidates as orange and green!) The election seemed peaceful (at least thus far) and we have not endured any protests, violence or visible rejection of the Colom.... yet. We will see... The UN was here to ensure that the election was... fair. How they managed to determine that the election was without corruption is beyond me in a country of chaos.

I think that is it for now. All the best. KP

A couple pictures from Guatemala

Finally! I have managed to post a couple pictures of Guatemala! I don´t know how to organize these photos.. but here is a list of what you are looking at (again... please ignore grammatical mistakes and spelling... ):

The view of the preschool to the cafeteria. In the back of the picture is the site where we are working. This preschool is immediately adjacent to the largest garbage dump in Central America in Zone 3 of Guatemala City. Some days the smell is stifling! The kids who attend this school are the children of the parents who scavange the garbage dump for recycle-ables.

The little girl is sitting outside of her house looking up at the roof of the school where we are standing looking at the neighborhood.

There is a pic of the children of the preschool in "Guate" (slang for guatemala city)

There are a couple pics of the garbage dump with the vultures lurking about.

The bus is the "chicken bus" we take to Guate... it takes an hour or so (one way) to commute to the project site. This bus is packed by the time we get to Guate. Guatemalans have no concept of personal space... let me tell you.

The picture of Lidnsie, Hilary and Zach and me is our smiling picture of our winning design (out of the 3 design teams). We have been working 7 days a week with many days as long as 12 hour days!!!

There are couple pics of Antigua where we are living. It´s a nice city although it has been flooding for the last two days! I have a cool pic of the icecream cart man pushing his helado up a flooded street but I can´t seem to upload it... I will try again later!

Almost off to Guatemala

After running a 10k in windy, rainy, Bellingham, I have attemped to figure out how to post a blog prior to leaving Seattle to document my pending journey. Currently, I am nervous, but excited to embark upon this journey with the UW landscape architecture department for the Safe Passage program http://www.safepassage.org/

I posted a couple pictures to document what I looked like prior to leaving.

Don't forget me Seattle. I will be back...

Natalie - October 2007