The beautiful Lake Atitlan followed by U.S. Politics

This past weekend we took our last group trip to Lake Atitlan and visited the towns of Santiago, Panajachel, and Panabaj. We spent most of Friday traveling on relatively straight roads and stopped at the CCDA, an organization the helps defend and keep land in the hands of local farmers. They specialize in coffee and have worked really hard to be able to sell their coffee with an organic label. They served us not only the best coffee I´ve ever had, but also hot chocolate (and I mean pure hot chocolate not like Nestle) and banana muffins. So good. We spent the evening in Santiago playing soccer with some little boys (girls vs boys....of course the girls won), and sitting on the top of our hostel watching a lightning storm come in over the volcanoes surrounding the lake. It was absolutely beautiful. I´m going to be spending my service time, starting on Monday, in Santiago and I can´t wait to go back. We also ate great food courtesy of a nice restaurant owner named Pedro or Juan, his name depends on if you ask him or Andrea. Here´s the view from our hostel.

Saturday we had a tour from the organization ANADESA, who took us to the neighboring village of Panabaj and showed us the different places people were martyred in the civil war and where hundreds of people died in the mudslide caused by hurricane Stan and Agitha. It was a very sad to see the vast areas of land where about 400 houses used to be but also great to see the work that ANADESA is doing to help rebuild and support the community. Plus it was a beautiful day, clean fresh air, no rain, and we were surrounded by mountains and volcanoes.

Sunday we took a boat over to Panajachel, which is a bigger, more touristy town. We shopped (I bought more DVDs) but unfortunately it started to downpour so we didn´t spend a whole lot of time in Panajachel. A very long, nauseating as always bus ride and we were back in the city. It was a fun weekend and we got a chance to get to know other Semilla workers Andrea and Alex (whom Andrea loved to call ¨such an idiot¨) who for all given purposes were our wonderful leaders in the absence of Vicki whom we sorely missed =(.

This is our last week for study and it´s been very bittersweet. I´m ready for classes to be over but I don´t want to leave my family or our great CASAS leaders. We had our final exam for Spanish class today and all we have left are presentations which mostly involve cooking food so it´ll be a lot of fun. We had our last ¨visit¨ yesterday and it´s very fitting that it was the U.S. Embassy. First of all it took us 30 minutes for them to even let us into the marble floored, ugly grey block building. Then we were given passes in exchange for our passports and lead into a conference room with skushy (that´s for you Heidi) black chairs. This was a stark contrast to the rooms were were in to listen to the organizations this weekend. Interesting cultural side note - the U.S. Embassy was the first organization that did not offer us coffee or refreshments of any kind. Anyway I´m not sure which part of the presentation was my favorite. Here´s what we learned.....

1. The U.S. single-handedly saved kids in the Middle East from becoming terrorists by teaching them English in a U.S. sponsored program named ¨Yes.¨ Now I´m sure it was just a poor choice of wording, but I quote ¨if they hadn´t been in the Yes program they could have been the terrorist who flew the planes in 9/11¨ We spent a lot of time laughing at the ridiculousness of this statement. Great lets teach them English and bring them to the U.S. to keep them from becoming terrorists......or wait now they can speak English and they know what to do to get into the country...no!!!!!

2. Tax payer dollars are being spent to teach State Department workers languages for 8 months that they don´t even need. At least in Singapore. Of course they speak Spanish! Everyday! They just brought in someone who looked suspiciously like a translator who looked at us and said, ¨well I don´t think you need me for this group.¨

3. The Cultural Affairs office is in charge of bringing U.S. culture to Guatemala, but they couldn´t give us an example of what that is. Unless Gospel Choirs and a Navy Band clarify that for you.

4. It is in fact ILLEGAL for them to bring Guatemalan culture back to the U.S.

5. State Department officers are positioned at any given place for 2-4 years because any longer than that and the person might start actually caring about the country they are living in (heaven forbid) and worse case scenario, maybe even more so than the U.S. (because that would be absolutely terrible). And I´m not exaggerating she honestly said that was the reason for the short tours. That you can see the world on shorter tours.

So take your pick on the best part. For our part it provided us a lot of laughs while we were waiting in the lobby afterwards. So I´m pretty sure we wouldn´t allowed back in even if we wanted to. Ah well. Sorry, I couldn´t take any pictures of the U.S. Embassy. It´s not allowed.