June 2nd, I flew out of Washington DC to Houston and from Houston to Guatemala City. It was a fairly uneventful flight. As soon as I walked out of the Guatemala City airport there was somebody advertising a shuttle to Antigua, so I jumped in the van with a couple other gringos and was off to Antigua. When I got to Antigua I was dropped off in the Central Park and then walked to the volunteer's house I was crashing at that night. Literally, everything was the same as it was when I was down in spring of 2009. So this made it very easy to find my way around.
After I had settled in at the apartment, and watched a little bit of the Guatemalan presidential debate (with 27 candidates!), I went out to Cafe No Se, a local dive bar where I was supposed to meet some other people from Safe Passage. The English Program Coordinator, Megan, was working their that night, and I managed to just miss Mike, the guitar teacher.
Friday morning I headed to Safe Passage. The bus stop for the volunteers was the same as 2 years ago and the bus ride was as long as I remembered it being. It was a 'reunion mensual', where all the parents came to the projects, but no kids came. This made it a relaxing day to start back in the project, it let me settle into the project a little before working with the kids.
Friday night I went back to Cafe No Se where Mike was playing a gig and got to play for a little bit during his break. This was great, but was a little bit tough because there was only a mic to mic the guitar, so I just had to sing really loud. Saturday I spent most of the day looking for apartments. I looked at a couple, but none were that appealing, so I decided to move into a homestay on sunday night. This plan is temporary, as I still would like to try and find an apartment in Antigua. Sunday afternoon I ended up playing Ultimate Frisbee with a local group in Antigua. It was great, it was a group that started up about a year ago and consisted of people who had never played before to very experienced players. There was one guy from Atlanta who had played on a team that had gone to club nationals, it a pleasant surprise to find this group in Antigua.
This week started my 'real' first week at Camino Seguro. I did orientation Monday morning and started working with the English department in the afternoon. Then tuesday I started my regular schedule, music in the morning, English in the afternoon. The mornings usually consist of teaching 2 hour long 1 on 1 guitar lessons with some of the students. The afternoons this week have consisted of doing a little bit of everything with the English department. My role in the English department is essentially to fill in the gaps... I will be helping to organize their materials and curriculum, be a liaison between the support teams and the English Department, as well as help teach English classes when some of the English teachers leave in a couple of weeks.
On Wednesday night I met with the manager of Cafe No Se and booked my first gig in Guatemala, for Saturday night from 8pm-12. Right after I booked the gig I went to the local music shop and purchased the guitar which I had been looking at for the past couple of days. I spent the whole night after that playing my new guitar. It was mostly a normal week at the project but on Friday the kids didn't come in again, so I met with all of the English Department in Antigua to work. We worked on organizing the curriculum and materials and talking about ways to improve the department.
After working with the English Department all morning and into the afternoon I was invited to play soccer with a friend. I ended up riding about 20 minutes on the back of my friends motorcycle up to El Hato, which is a local community in the hills above Antigua. My friend worked as an English teacher their and was involved in a local soccer tournament. We ended up walking down a winding dirt path to get to the cancha, or field. It was amazing, it was a small dirt field with fences on 2 sides, a cemetery on another side, and a very steep drop off on the other. The view from the field was beautiful. I was one of 3 gringos playing, and everyone else was part of the local community there. It started to rain when we headed back, so we ended up hitching a ride with a friendly Guatemalan back to Antigua. It turned out that the man had been good friends with Hanley Denning, the founder of Safe Passage. I made it back to Antigua in time for dinner, and now here I am writing my blog!
Its been a busy first week in Guatemala and I wouldn't ask for anything more!
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