and so it is...: August 2007

30 August 2007

my trip to guatemala

on august 16 i went down to guatemala with my roommate ashlee to teach english in a town called patzicia. while there we traveled to panajachel and antigua. it was my first time going to a third-world country. i delayed writing this post knowing that writing about it would mean that it was actually over, signifying that i had returned to the real world, with my real job, and real life problems.

in guatemala, all of that was gone and it was a wonderful break. once you read on, you'll see that my trip down there wasn't exactly easy, but the lessons i learned and the experiences i had made it beyond invaluable. i wanted to go down there and learn to open my heart more. and to come back more humble. and to be exposed. all of which happened.

my first days back i felt like a different person. extreme for having only been there a short time, perhaps. but i loved that feeling; it was invigorating. gone was the rush of everyday life and i came back, if only for a fleeting moment, as an observer. the change in my surroundings allowed me to come back and feel as though i was not part of the hussle and bussle that is life. there have been rare moments in my life where, for whatever reason, i don't actually feel caught up in living my life. and i can slow down long enough to actually see what's important. those are the moments that change you.

and that is what guatemala did for me. i came back and my first thoughts were not to run head-first back into my life. i wanted to soak in for as long as possible the sights and sounds that i had seen. i wanted to cling to the thoughts of the people i saw down there. i wanted to let my desire to help them fuel me as long as possible.

but as is always the case, life creeps back in. work takes over, as does the day-to-day tasks we all must complete. but i would like to think that it was not all in vain. guatemala, in even the smallest way, changed me. i came back with a deep appreciation for being born in the country that i was. and a greater love for all of god's children. and with the realization that i have to keep myself better grounded on what's important in life.

i was surrounded down there by people who truly had little to nothing. and here i am with such abundance. it creates quite the dilemma. what do we do, those who have been given so much? i don't feel as though i came back with a concrete solution other than to learn to give. to give of our time to others. to give of our hearts. to give of our finances. it can be across the globe or across the street. but the message is the same, learn to give.

i hope that i can take the lessons i learned and not let them be fleeting memories from a great, yet trying, trip...

this is my story.

patzicia

we stayed and taught in a town called patzia, which is about an hour and half west of guatemala city. the first night we stayed at julio's house, (the director of all three of the schools). his kids had a pet parakeet. i was too scared to touch it but wanted a picture with it. thus, below.

the cemetary. you can see the town below.

walking to school.

miriam's children (the lady that cooked for us).

denise (on the left). she is the director of the patzicia school that we worked in.

panajachel and lake atitlan

the first place we traveled was panajachel. we were there for two nights before returning back to patzicia to teach. below are some photos from our travels around. for the great stories of what happened here, read the post on marvin and company...

here is the market. not the tourist market, but the real, i get my food here and am guatemalan, market. marvin had a friend selling chicken here so we went to visit him.

marvin and ashlee on the boat.

ash and tracy (notice the volacano behind us)

the church was directly across from our hotel.

marvin on the top of the boat. notice the volcano behind him. lake atitlan is surrounded by three volcanoes.

ash and me with our friend who owned the boat we took. we went across the lake to another village called santiago. can i count that as visiting chile?

ah, heaven. this was the room we stayed in for $20/person/night. not bad, i say.

look how clean our shower was! i even took off my sandals for this one...

the boats.

me and samuel (marvin's brother and my potential husband) playing paper, rocks, scissors. and yes, i won. hence the smiling.

being sick = no fun

ah, getting parasites. isn't that what every person hopes for on trips? i know i sure did. and boy did i luck out. and it even happened at the beginning of my trip. what more could a girl ask for?

our third night there we ate at miriam's house. miriam is a woman in patzicia that we paid to cook for us. ashlee had eaten her food the entire six months she lived in guatemala. this was our second meal with her and we were served hamburgers and french fries. a guatemalan trying to make an american meal is not a good idea. i remember looking in her kitchen and knowing this could not be good. towards the end of my meal i saw a small bug cooked into my fries and knew it was too late.

i got sick that night.

now, being sick in a foreign country naturally presents some difficulties. i thought that i could wait it out and i'd be fine, but there's only so much time and immodium can do. tuesday morning we decided to go to a local clinic. the health care was free and so there were lines of guatemalans to be helped. yet somehow we went straight to the front of the line. how does that work? granted i was really ill and grateful for the treatment, but still left feeling like something was not right with what just happened.

the doctor gave me four pills that i have NO clue what they were. but drank them i did. by the evening i was feeling better. i had one day of feeling fine and then thursday it reared it's ugly head again. (probably didn't help that the day before i had only eaten mcdonald's as it was the only restaurant i could trust). thursday i took yet another dose of who-knows-what and it still didn't help.

add on that hurricane deane was in the area and brought this nasty, cold rain. we were prepared for sunshine and inadequately dressed. aptly so, ashlee and i both got bad colds at the same time.

when i came back to the states i went to the doctor and found out i had an ear infection and nasty cold, but that my stomach seemed to be fine.

here is me. being sick. and cold. and sitting next to my bed.

in the car taking my pills (ash thought it was so funny and decided to document it). please notice
my hair. i was scared of our shower and put off taking one as long as possible. this is what i call my greasy look.

ah, dear samuel. the day before we left, samuel traveled two hours to patzicia to deliver a dear, dear card for us. apparently his bus broke down on his way back. that's dedication.

our bathroom. where i spent way too much time for my liking.

this is what we call "sick food." we only had tiendas, which are tiny, tiny stores with limited selections to buy our food. so i basically had soup and bananas. please notice the bleach we used to wash all the food we ate.

meeting marvin and company

one of the coolest experiences i had during my trip was meeting a guy named marvin. let me describe the situation ash and i found ourselves in so you can appreciate marvin walking into our lives.

we took a trip down to panajachel (called "pana" by the locals). it's also where lake atitlan is and is popular among the tourist. on our way we were trying to transfer buses. ash being the lead that she is, talked to the bus driver and we thought all was well as we transfered buses. sadly, we realized we had been had as we ended up in the same location the bus originally left from. frustrated, ash went to try to talk to the bus driver to figure out how we could get to pana.

what do i do, of course, but try to look for anyone that looked like a tourist. a rarity in whatever town it was we were in. i did spot one guy though that looked like he could speak english (how stereotypical is that? how does someone look like they speak english?).

luckily for me, he did. and pretty well too. turns out his name is marvin and he was from the town we were going to. we had a delightful conversation with him. come to find out he's 33 and his dad was a local pastor in pana. he goes home every weekend to see his family. he had lived in los angelos for two years and that's where he picked up his english.

as we approached pana, he offered for us to come meet us family. we were inseperable for the next two days. everywhere we went marvin came with us. it was so perfect! he knew everyone in town and even got us a free boat ride when we were running out of money. his family was absolulely charming. i learned how much you can bond with people even without being able to speak the language. i also learned to say estoy who-gone-doe ("just kidding" in spanish. and yes, i have no clue how to spell it. i can barely speak it, people).

this family completely opened their arms to us. i truly could feel the spirit in their home. it was so refreshing to be around. i even developed a crush on marvin's 21-year-old brother, samuel. yes, i still have a thing for latins. he is trying to go to university to study and my heart goes out to him. i wish i could somehow get him a visa so he could come study here. that's the frustrating thing (one of them) about this country. the education system is so lacking. if you are intelligent and wanting to get higher education it's nearly impossible to get in and pay for it.

one of the highlights of meeting the family was going to a bible appreciation night with them. as their dad is a pastor, he was asked to come and help fundraise. the evening was so interesting and in some ways extreme. they had a pastor casting out sin from one woman and i was so grateful at that moment for the church and priesthood. it was a great glimpse though into just how dedicated and religious these people really are.

meet our new best friend, marvin.

this is a "tuk-tuk" aka taxi. it was a luxury that marvin graciously treated us to.

after the bible appreciation night we walked around town and got dessert. ester (their sister), samuel (marvin's brother) ash, marvin, me and marvin's friend.

ash and i went towards the end of the week to antigua, another tourist spot. marvin travelled three hours each way so he could spend the day with us. and even then we shopped most of the time. this man is a saint. he even carried our bags. don't worry, i treated him to a smoothie to make up for his troubles... this is us in the catacombs at antigua.

the gonzalez family.

this is a video of ash and marvin at the old catholic church. please ignore the camera skills (i apologize for any advance headaches it may cause).

bonding time with ashlee

going to a foreign country with a person is undoubtedly going to bring out sides that you had no clue existed and that leave you wondering who this person is you're traveling with. luckily for me, that wasn't the case with ashlee. call it knowing her so well before we went, but there were no surprises.

now, lest you think all was roses, we definitely had our annoyed times with each other. yet, it added to the experience. working through annoyances actually left me feeling closer to her afterwards. funny how that happens. add on that truly all we had was each other and, well, you're naturally going to bond over that.

one bonding experience in particular comes to mind. the second day there we decided we wanted to go to a tourist town called panajachel. up until that point we had been with someone local while in guatemala. going to pana (as it's called by the locals) was our first adventure out on our own.

to get anywhere in guatemala you take buses. not systematic, government-owned buses. we're talking old American school buses that are privately owned and driven insanely and stuffed to the brim with people. to catch the bus you stand on the side of the road (anywhere, really) and flail your hand to signal you want the bus to stop.

as we waved the bus down for our first trip, i naively waited for it to stop to only be told by ashlee to run. and run we did as the bus came to a slow roll and we ran to catch up and jump in the back. the door slammed behind us and we were shoved in the back. let's just say it was standing room only. the bus chugged along with the mariachi band blarring from the speakers. i looked back at ashlee and realized that she was all i had.

i'm amazed at how used to the bus system i got. bless ashlee for taking care of me though and trying to distract me when i was scared by their crazy driving. i remember wondering on that first bus ride why ashlee was so intently talking to me about the political situation in guatemala. as the bus turned the corner, i looked to my right and saw nothing but mountain straight down about two feet away. i then understood all to well her technique to distract and was suddenly very interested in guatemalan politics.

ready for our trip...that shirt is what part of what i call my "travel ensemble." i wear it anytime i fly. really i should throw it away, but it's so blasted comfortable.

ashlee on our first night. the bathroom wasn't that nice but at least they had some nice two-tone paint going on to give some aesthetic value.

on the boat ride out to one of the villages on lake atitlan.

in the catacombs under an old catholic cathedral built in 1540's in antigua (an old colonial spanish town).

lessons learned, namely HUMILITY

when i went to guatemala one of my primary objectives was to come back humble. i was amazed at how humble i came back (that sounds pretty boastful, no?). but truly, the sights that you see in a third-world country leave you overwhelmingly grateful and humble for the abudance of blessings you have.

below are some of the sights i saw around town that helped in creating this sense of gratitude within me.

this is a view of some local mayan women walking in the town we stayed in (patcizia). look at those balancing skills! our director told us that once she tried to lift one of those pans and they weighed around 60-70 pounds.

a typical home in pahute, a small village that's up in the mountains near patzicia. you can see that it's mud put in between sticks for the body of the house. notice to the left the concrete structure. that's called a pilla. the middle section has water and this is where you wash your dishes/clothes/etc.

as we were walking back we saw this little boy. he can't go to school as he works all day in the field helping his family. we asked where he was going and he was going to harvest.

so many of these children can't afford to go to school and so they are out in the streets playing most of the day. we walked down and came across these girls. notice their traditional mayan outfits that are beautiful. not pictured is their friend who was around eight or nine and she was carrying her little one-year-old brother on her back wrapped up in a tied blanket. it's no wonder these people aren't taller. they kill their backs at young ages and don't allow their kids to walk around and grow by keeping them in these blankets on their backs.

the bathroom at the first place i stayed. you'll notice a trash can next to the toilet. you don't flush toilet paper in most places in guatemala (unless it's a really nice place like a hotel).

the final ones

at last...(insert etta james song here) the final wedding pictures have come along. my lonely blog without complete pictures is over. and life is like a song. oh yeah. at last.

wow. that stop sign behind is a great accent. es mi familia. my brother derek, moi, my stepmom carol, my dad and brother aaron. this is us going to a rehearsal dinner. check out those strapping men.

me and my stepmom. and my bridesmaid dress for $15. tj maxx has forever secured it's place as my favorite bargain spot.

tab and our parents.

i LOVE my sister's camera. and the pearl bracelet my sister gave me as a bridesmaid gift. what's even better about the bracelet is that she found it at an antique shop and it has the initial D on it. and somehow with my many names there is not a D to be found anywhere...

they're coming

i still have photos to upload from my sister's wedding and then my trip to guatemala. but until i get them all, here's my favorite photo from my trip...

11 August 2007

post weddingness

after the day's wedding festivities, we decided to finish off the evening with introducing my parents to sushi. which i'm sad to say did not go over too well. luckily at least the monuments were a hit...

kent. this is the face he had pretty much the entire time as he was trying his sushi.

lori (sister-in-law) gazing out at the view from the lincoln. for the girls out there, please notice her sleeves. i think they're darling.

us at the lincoln

aaron in my office

kent being kent ???

it finally happened

at 10:30 a.m. (well, slightly later as we got started late) on 11 august 2007, tabitha voncannon and evan liddiard were wed. in beautiful style. and with great taste. and by a darling japanese bishop that was so nervous his hands were shaking --it was quite endearing.

everything went as planned. no falls down the aisles, no awkward family moments, nothing but love really. there was even a slight breeze outside to offer a break from the painfully hot days we've been having.

i even had my very own father of the bride moment. my sister and evan were rushing out to the car with everyone blowing their bubbles and giving well wishes. i was packing things up and off in the distance. as my sister went to get in the car she looked around asking for me and then came over to give me one last hug before wisking off to her honeymoon. it hit me the tie and love that i share with my sister. i can't remember the last time that i felt this genuinely happy for someone.

enjoy the photos.