During our first excursion on this trip the tour guide told us (in Spanish), “There are two seasons here in Guatemala: the dry season and the rainy season. Right now we are in the rainy season.” And honestly I think he meant to say the wet season. I have now grown accustomed to to the dampness in everything I touch. My clothes, my papers, even the bed sheets that I slide into every night to sleep. It is better now that we aren’t directly on the water like we were during orientation. There every evening the clouds would slowly spill over the mountains and we would have to speak up over the aggressive rain that would splat loudly onto the tin roof of our hotel. Like clockwork the days are hot and sunny until around 2pm when the cold and the clouds move in.
It keeps hitting me that: I have never traveled out of the country without my family before now, nor have I ever been out of the country for this long either. That explains my homesicknesses and I constantly need to remind myself that I am not being overdramatic for missing my family sooner than I did when I went to college because this experience is something completely different. It’s an experience that I am more use to sharing with my family than the act of going to school and socializing with friends.
Starting yesterday I did actually get a bit of a cold as well and today I layed low hoping to take care of it before it got worse. Luckily, I think it’s not anything too serious and my day off made me feel loads better.
We only have three more full days here in Guatemala City which is such a relief becuase things have been quite cramped here at the CCS “Compound” as we have come to refer to it. Also, I am really excited to finally start living with host families. I think the much needed space between us (all the TBB students) will definitley improve our relationships as well because, as of late, our patience with eachother has been runinng a bit thin.
Tonight we all met Timber and Frame. The filming company that is going to be joining us for a week in each core country (so Guatemala, Thailand, and Ghana). That’s super exciting for me as well because they’re going to be able to document our growth and get much better footage of the trip than I could ever capture on my simple “CoolPix” Nikon camera.
Our work here has been with a National Reserves company and it is obviously the first time they have worked with any sort of young adult group because our tasks and “work” seems thrown together. We are supposed to be learning about sustainability and working in agriculture but twice all we did for that day was walk around nature picking up trash. This is all frustrating and I would like to give the company my feedback and critiques but I don’t really know how. I can tell this work is not what TBB intended for us to do here either and our program leaders are doing a good job of going with the flow but when I shared my frustrations they agreed. Hopefully the agricultural work in Tecpan will be more rewarding and meaningful.
