Friday, July 25, 2008

Some Things I Learned in Guatemala

My roommate Cristi and I found roundtrip last minute tickets to Guatemala for $357. So we bought them and a week later we were on a plane bound for one of the most homicidal countries in the western hemisphere. We packed a backpack a piece and were ready for adventure.

Here are some things I learned....

Lava is hot

Guatemala is covered with volcanoes.
There is one that is still active right outside Guatemala City. We climbed it on Tuesday and learned that Guatemala is not at all interested in ensuring your safety. You are kind of responsible for that yourself. And as it turns out, most people who travel to Guatemala these days with the crime rates being what they are, are not really “safety” type people. We payed for some maniac to drive us on a huge bus up a rather questionable mountain hill and then hike straight up a volcano to roast hot dogs over flowing lava.
Lava rocks are sharp when they are cool and lava when they are hot, so neither option is really welcoming you to take a spill. As you walk on the rocks you look down and can see hot lava under the cooler lava on top and you can feel the heat pulsing through the cracks in the rocks. If you stay still for very long it feels like your legs are going to melt off along with the rubber on your tennis shoes, but it is MOLTEN LAVA, so how can you possibly NOT hike it.

Guatemalan buses are scarier than skydiving

After going to six flags last month I thought skydiving had ruined my ability to feel scared by risky situations. The crazy Guatemalan bus drivers took that challenge and managed to scare the pants off of me (that is just a figure of speech, rest assured I stayed fully clothed). The buses were all school buses from the united states that look like they got in a fight with the guys from MTV’s Pimp My Ride and lost. Comforting to know that the buses that had been rejected by the strapped for cash public school system for being unfit to drive over well paved flat roads were now being used to scale steep unpaved mountains slopes. There are a few types of buses in Guatemala. The shuttles are run by tourist agencies and cost like $20 - $30 and are Toyota minivans. Then there are the chicken buses. Appropriately named for the chance that you might be sharing your seat with a chicken. These buses are packed with locals. On one such occasion a kind person offered to let us sit on a bucket between the rows of seats rather than standing for the 2 hours on the bumpy road.
A holy place is wherever you can feel the spirit

We went to Lake Atitlan, which is rumored by several mormon scholars to be The Waters of Mormon talked about in Mosiah. It was absolutely breathtaking. We decided to set logic and healthy skepticism aside and believe that we were actually on the waters of Mormon. We took a boat out to a little pueblo called San Marcos. It was very quiet and small and there was no electricity the first night. We bought flashlights and went and sat on the pier and watched the moon over the silent lake. Then the next morning we decided to do our scripture study on the pier and watch the sunrise. We read from the verses in Mosiah that talk about the waters of mormon and tried to feel what they must have felt. In Mosiah 18: 30 it says,

; yea, the place of Mormon, the waters of Mormon, the forest of Mormon, how beautiful are they to the eyes of them who there came to the knowledge of their Redeemer

It is amazing to think that the already gorgeous backdrop for their conversion, was improved upon by an intimate communion with the spirit. I think I will always think of Ricks college as beautiful for that reason.A mormon with a Book of Mormon, on the waters of mormon at the edge of the forest of mormon. Overall a very mormon morning.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

I just need to get caught up...

So I have fallen way behind in this blogging business and as you may have guessed lots has happened, but you only will hear about the things that have photos attached. I am now enjoying that great summer vacation that makes teaching so tempting before you know better. I find that I am a horrible manager of free time and for this purpose I keep myself nauseatingly busy whenever possible. For example, going in to this week my ONLY solid plan was one dental appointment. Yikes.

Anyhow, I took my students (about 80 of them) to see the Statue of Liberty. I thought it was a fitting field trip, since they are all immigrants and New Yorkers and had never been that far down in Manhattan (keep in mind the Statue is only about 11 miles from the school). All the other teachers thought I was crazy and there were many moments that day that I agreed with them. Going to the statue involved marching 80 kids to the Subway, getting them all on the same train car, constantly reminding them to stop shouting and swinging from the handrails as we passed through midtown and the financial district and all the business people were heading to work and giving me dirty looks in the process. Then we had to take all the students through security (based on several essays I read afterwards, this was their favorite part! KIDS!) then get them on a ferry and over to liberty island at which point we got in another line to wait to go up to the pedestal. At this point all the kids smashed together in line and since they're middle schoolers this soon turned into a chorus of shrieks and shouting "Ms. Allred, someone keeps grabbing my $#@" or "Ms. Allred, tell her to stop touching me there." For the last five minutes I made them all stand with their hands in the air. They loved that!

We went up the pedestal after another round of security then came down, had lunch and then did the whole commuting nightmare in reverse. I was exhausted. The essays that I made them write afterwards included observations like “that statue was very small and ugly” and lots of notes about the security procedures so over all it was a raging success.


For memorial day a few friends and I went up to Lake Placid and went river rafting all day the first day. We were on the river for 6 and a half hours with a really funny guide. Toward the end of the trip the guide told me that I have authority issues and handed me the guide paddle and told me to take over. I happily obliged but all my friends then refused to listen and took naps in the raft. It was a lot of fun. Then we went to Montreal on Sunday so I could practice my French. We had poutine; which is a Montreal treat, French fries and gravy. A heart attack with a smile.
Lake Placid is beautiful.


The end of the school year was a wild experience. It got really hot and we have no AC and I work on the fourth floor of a brick building which means the kids went NUTS! Lots of fights and other niceties. I was enlisted to be a Chaperone when the graduating 8th graders went to Six Flags great adventure. I rode the Kingda Ka and every other ride and found out that sky diving kind of ruins you as far as thrills like that go. Over the course of the day my students kept coming up to me and claiming that they had contracted the flu. When I asked when the symptoms started they would invariably tell me that it happened at just about the same time as they rode some crazy ride. They were so confused. I hung out with some great teachers from my school.

The last day of school a bunch of the teachers went to a local restaurant and drank large amounts of alcohol at noon. It was really funny. The math teachers were taking shots like college frat boys.


After hanging out with my drunk colleagues I headed down to the Stake Center for youth conference. We had a three-day scavenger hunt for 70 youth in which they ran all over downtown Manhattan in teams of 10 youth and 2 leaders and they stayed at the apartments of different members of the stake. We went to the today show and saw Coldplay, we went on a cruise around the island, we went to see Stomp, we went and did baptisms for the dead, we taught them how to index (step 2 of extraction). We ran those kids so ragged that they all fell
asleep on the harbor cruise and at Stomp, which is basically a bunch of guys banging on trashcans as loud as they can. The youth conference ended in true youth conference fashion with a testimony meeting that certainly gave a good play by play of the weekend and was full of inside jokes and shout outs, but lacked some of that testimoniness that you often look for at those meetings.