Final week of classes

We spent the last week in a small village on Lake Atitlan called San Marcos. The lake is about 3 hours from Antigua and is the deepest in Central America. I was taking morning Spanish classes from a local teacher named Clemente and Jenn was working on the guitar. Clemente is a good teacher and a nice guy. He even took us up The Indian Nose, a popular hike with a great lake view, on Saturday. We got to take the most local form of transportation yet, the pick-up, with Clemente as our guide. About 20 people stand in the back of a pick-up truck and hold on for dear life as it swerves up the mountain switchbacks to the trail head. 

Today, we made our first border crossing of the trip. We are now in El Salvador at a surf town called El Tunco. Guatemala was pretty mild temperatures and often cold at night. But here it is summer again. ¡Hace mucho calor!

Our favorite spot on the lake

The pick-up ride to The Indian Nose trailhead 

Overlooking Lake Atitlan from The Indian Nose

Academia de Hongos (Mushroom Academy)

"Ok. Who wants to go first?" Masjid asked the group.

Jenn steps up to the 'glove box', which is a home made, hermetically-sealed plexiglass box with two, four inch diameter holes in one side. She dons a pair of lunch lady style one-time-use plastic gloves and sticks her hands into the glove box, just as Masjid had demonstrated. 

"Now pick up the bottle and remove the cap," Masjid instructs.

"Oh, no, the other bottle. Ok, yes that one."

There are numerous jars and bottles in the glove box. Each containing media for cultivating blue oyster mushrooms. 

The following steps are difficult to describe (as I was not completely tracking what was going on) but in short, it involved spraying everything in the glove box with a healthy amount of 70% alcohol for disinfection, then adding 1 ml of a mushroom growing nutrient dispensed from a syringe with an unnecessarily long needle, and then transferring media from one jar to another. 

"Don't touch rim to rim. It is very important to avoid contamination." Masjid constantly reminded as Jenn executed the mushroom media inoculation imperfectly. 

(Jenn here: basically I had to dislodge a bunch of moldy, er, "inoculated," pieces of grain that had congealed together in  repurposed soy sauce bottle, then shake them out, one by one, into the approximately one-centimeter-in-diameter neck of another repurposed glass bottle of un-inoculated grains. Everything was super slippery from the alcohol, plus I knew Tim was going to love how much I was struggling. Not only did I touch the rims together, but I dropped the whole damn thing and spilled inoculated (i.e., moldy) grains all over the box. Whoopsie.)

Next, it was my turn. Then, another guy from Georgia. Everyone got a chance to help with mushroom inoculation. Prior to helping with this important step in the production of mushrooms, we had a 2 hour lecture on the mushroom basics by Tanel, from Estonia here at the Fungi Academy. It is an intentional community in the hills above the town we are staying at (San Marcos) on Lake Atitlan. They started about 9 months ago with the mission of educating people on the power of mushrooms to save the world. They are currently working on a internet-funded campaign to purchase a school bus, which will serve as a mobile mushroom lab that they will drive around Central and South America spreading the word about mushrooms and their powers.

This was the most interesting place we have visited on our trip so far. Intentional communities are full of unique, interesting people. I hope to encounter more during our travels. If anyone knows of other intentional communities, let us know!

http://fungiacademy.com/about-us/

Taking a break at the academy de Hongos.


Eunice teaches us how to inoculate a log with mushrooms.

Poco a poco

I have learned after three weeks of Spanish classes here in Antigua that language learning does not come quickly. My teacher at Antigüena Spanish School, Ana, told me every day; 'poco a poco' (little by little). It is nice when I learn a new word in school and then hear it later that day in the street or at dinner with our host mom. Slowly, I'm training my lips to form words automatically and burning new neural pathways into my brain. It is fun, yet very exhausting.

Today we made the first big move of our trip. We have just arrived to Lake Atitlan (in the village of San Marcos) to spend one week here exploring the numerous pueblos surrounding the lake. I have found a Spanish tutor and will continue to study each morning with him while Jenn continues to work on the guitar.

My teacher, Ana

Exploring some ruins of a church/convent that was destroyed in an earthquake in the 18th century

Cerro de la Cruz. A vista point above the city of Antigua.

¡Feliz Día de Independencia!

While we wait for Tim to post pics of our trip to Lake Atitlan (ahem), here is an update: Tomorrow is Guatemala's Independence Day, so we have been seeing groups of young people dressed in blue and white running behind a torch bearer (still haven't figured out what that is about)and groups of motorcyclists with blue and white balloons attached to their bikes since last week, and today the "desfiles" start.

Tim and I live with a Guatemalan family and the following students: Hannah from Australia, Michelle from Taiwan, Luisa from Germany, Isa from the Netherlands, and Lianne from Scotland. That is, all representatives from countries with strong drinking traditions (well, maybe not Taiwan), so no doubt we will do our part to celebrate independence and contribute to the sales of Gallo tonight, or "the best beer in the world," as the beer marketers have successfully conditioned all Guatemalans to believe. #morelikeworstbeer #orcoorslight

Subida de Acatenango

This past weekend Tim and I climbed the Acatenango Volcano, one of (at least) four volcanos surrounding Antigua. Acatenango is dormant, but from the top you have an excellent view of Fuego Volcano, which erupts every 8-15 days. As with most things in Guatemala, the travel angency gave us very little information about what to bring or what the trip would be like, but we knew to bring four liters of water each from conversations with other travel agencies, as well as all of the clothing we currently possess, as it would be cold. 

Our two guides were Fidel, age 63, and his son Antonio, age 16. Antonio was drinking a 16-ounce energy drink on the hike up because he had been slaughtering pigs from 8 the previous evening until 6 in the morning, before meeting our group just four hours later at around 10am. Fidel carried their tent, and the rest of what must have been at least 30 lbs. of gear, in a bag withh shoulder straps he declined to use in favor of a rope stretched across his forehead.

Fidel and Antonio used their machetes to cut firewood for a fire at our base camp, which we reached after about five hours of hiking straight up the mountainside through cornfields planted at about a billion-percent grade (Tim had been teaching me about civil engineering - clearly I'm a quick study). The volcano erupted the whole night, so we slept very little, but it was worth the sight of lava and flaming rocks hurtling down the side of the volcano.

We went to bed early in our tents and awoke at 3:30 to hike the rest of the way to the top of Acatenango to get an even better view of Fuego, as well as to see the sun rise over the valley and explore Acatenango's crater. The descent to base camp was an easy downhill "ski" through volcanic ash, followed by a two-hour sprint to the bottom after we ate breakfast and packed up. 

Two days later, it's difficult to climb stairs, but we both agree it was the coolest hike we've ever done. We also had incredible luck - many people make the hike and the volcano doesn't erupt, or fog obscures the view, or they get rained on for 24 hours. We had beautiful weather and an overall wonderful experience.

First week of classes

"Estoy solo!" is a phrase that I used often the first day of 'No Ingles'. It means "I am alone!" When Jenn and I first started talking exclusively in espanol I felt isolated. She is very patient and speaks slowly, but I was only catching every third or fourth word. On Sunday we spent most of the day speaking in Spanish. At the end of the day we were both exhausted and decided to cheat a little. Every day this week I spoke for four hours with my Guatemalan teacher, Ana, exclusively in Spanish and then on and off with Jenn throughout the day. Full immersion is extremely difficult and isolating, so a blend of immersion and Ingles is perfect. My speech is getting better, little by little. I feel some improvement already after the first week.

Because Jenn is already proficient in Spanish, she is not taking classes. She bought a guitar on Craigslist right before we left The States and has found a guitar instructor, named Marco, here in Antigua. She takes her class with Marco while I am in Spanish class each morning. 

It's an exciting time of new skill learning for both of us!