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.

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.

Vegas Adventure

The great thing about working in public school in New York City is all the vacation time I get. My spring break this year was connected to the Greek Orthodox Easter instead of the Roman Catholic Easter so it was the last week in April. I flew to Las Vegas to see my friend Adam and Ashley Hawkins and meet her fiance. We decided that I would meet him in April instead of attending their wedding in June because weddings are so crazy that I would only be able to see her for like 23 seconds while I passed through her line and the rest of the time she would be so busy with her family and lost in the haze that creates Bridezillas that it would be pointless.

I flew in Sunday night after Stake Conference. It is noteworthy that I was called as the 2nd counselor in the Stake Young Women's presidency. I was very overwhelmed by it at first, especially given the 3 other callings I had but I have been learning to manage it and I really do love the girls. It is interesting though that through my job and my callings I spend all my time with teenagers. They can be a challenge and I didn't even have the benefit of knowing them when they were cute and young.

I went to school with Ashley on Monday to see what she calls her "ghetto school." I think I gasped out loud at least 10 times. One was when I saw the campus, gorgeous no rats, nice, new huge, open courtyards, a football field. You know, the stuff my kids only see in movies. Anyhoo, the kids filed in, I gasped again when I saw real live white kids. Another gasp when one of the kids said (direct quote) "get your "A" up here!" You see, he actually said "A" and not the full word! WHAT!??! Since when do kids do that? Another gasp when Ashley stood up and said "Okay" and all the kids went silent!!! Gasp #5 was when she said get out your pencils and not only did they HAVE pencils they actually got them out!!! #6 She gave them some ridiculous assignment and they DID IT with not much prompting. #7 We went a whole class period with not ONE fight!!! Nobody even hit each other!! #8 when the TV on the wall came on for the morning student broadcast(we have 1 TV for the whole school, she also has her own computer, we have 4 computers for the whole school and those belong to the Deans and APs) #9 the kids all went up and did presentations with no inappropriate language, gestures or drawings on the board#10 When during the broadcast a senior girl was asked to prom by her GIRLFRIEND! Apparently being a lesbian is all the rage at her school.

Tuesday I drove to Disneyland to meet up with the family. It had been 10 years since I had been there. I love that place, but it seemed so small as an adult. The castle looked like a miniature.

This is me with my niece Ava. This was only the second time we had ever met which might explain the baffled look on her face.
We all rode Peter Pan together. It is still one of my favorites. This is my mom, my sister and her daughter Kea.
The last ride of the evening, as a pack of caged wild animals. We had been going all day but as you can see from Kea's face we were still having fun!
Dad found his favorite eatery the next day at the Baker's Field Bakery. It is hard to be a champion for Bakersfield but Dad sure gives it his all.
I drove back to my G-ma's house in St. George that afternoon and arrived at about 1 am on my birthday. For my birthday, Grandma took Bryce and his friend and I to see Zion National Park. It was beautiful. We hiked around and had a lot of fun.
It was a perfect birthday. Then Grandma planned a birthday BBQ with Aunt Ada. It was way yummy. Then we all went back to G-ma's house and watched "Enchanted."


The next day we went and saw the St. George temple, the new Joseph Smith film (I had never seen it) and Brigham Youngs house before I headed back to Vegas. The sister missionaries had G-ma in tears and me practicing my control over my eye roll reflex.

I went and met Ashley's fiance (GREAT GUY) and we went and hung out with my friend Adam. Adam took me out to see Le Reve on Saturday night as a birthday celebration. It was an amazing experience. I left feeling drained, emotionally, mentally and physically. I am always in awe of what people can dream up in their mind and how they can make it happen so that I can share in that creative genius. A shout out to the creativity that abounds in the human race!!

A little update

Hello Again from New York City. Dad is really giving me run for my money now that he is blogging twice a month, although the blogs are fairly lame. Here is a view of the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset with the financial district behind it. I went to a park underneath it with my friend Adam. I had been across the bridge a gazillion times but never knew about the park. Three cheers for living in a city that you get to discover in layers.

A friend from the ward, who I actually knew from a ward in Provo performed at Amateur night at the Apollo. This is noteworthy for several reasons. First he is white! The Apollo is widely accepted as the heart of African American talent. It boasts making stars like Stevie Wonder, Micheal Jackson (although I don't know that they actually still claim him), Billie Holiday, Lauryn Hill, James Brown and our own Gladys Knight. Second he is Mormon and did a stand up comedy routine in front of a typically pretty rough crowd. He got booed off the stage within the first 3 minutes, much to the chagrin of the more than 50 people from our ward who came to cheer.



This era of my life at school is marked by many field trips. I feel a need to expose my students to interesting things and to give them the opportunity to be around adults who will support them. The problem with them is, they never want to go home. They are usually a lot of fun but VERY exhausting after working all day then traipsing all over the city with a group of pre-teens. Here are some of our field trips.

We went to the Little Red Lighthouse that is under the George Washington Bridge and ended up playing ultimate frisbee in the park next to it for like an hour. It was a blast. In this picture a few of the students were "posing" and Mr. Avedissian (my co-teacher) and I were making fun of the way they try to be all seductive at the age of 13.
This is a group of them that we took to Chinatown. I wouldn't let the waiter give them forks until they tried the chopsticks. They were pretty good sports about my China obsession and humored me by telling me that everything was cool. This was great for me becuase they typically try to convince me that I am not cool. Especially when they make fun of my cell phone. How do 13 year olds from the projects become such technology snobs?

I went with my friend Adam to the Chelsea piers to hit golf balls at the Hudson. None of mine actually made it but a few of his did.
This is a field trip up to Inwood Hill Park where the kids were able to climb around on rocks and talk to a ranger about all the animals finding girlfriends for spring.
I went to the Daily Show with Jon Stewart with my friend Aja and Jeff. I haven't laughed that hard in a LONG time. I thought I was going to die and I am pretty sure all the people around me kind of wished that I would.

The Easter Hangover

I got Good Friday off but our spring break is not until April. The NYC Department of Ed has chosen to solve the great Catholic Dilemma for us and they have chosen to honor the Eastern Orthodox Easter instead of the Roman Catholic.

My day off was filled with meetings, for girls camp and for school but I did get to stay up until 4am over at a friends house. I have not been able to stay up that late in FOREVER. By about 11:00 I was totally out of it.

Saturday night, some friends and I stayed up all night watching Pride and Prejudice. The only reason this is noteworthy is because the all-night Pride and Prejudice party was suggested and carried out by a guy and he is Straight. On top of that there was no hope of him or any of the other guys attending that night to hook up with any of the girls in the room. Throughout the night, straight guys always outnumbered girls in the room and we watched all 5 hours. Apparently these guys wanted some insight into the female heart. Just add this night to the long list of examples of how NYC guys are their own breed. At midnight I made myself sick on Easter candy as a way to commemorate another Lent over.


On Easter we had a group of friends over for an Easter ham. We have a very sensitive fire alarm and when there was smoke coming out of the oven it went off. The problem is that we have very high ceilings so there is little we can do to get it to stop. Two of our friends decided to help and get the smoke away from the alarm. Quick thinking.


On Friday, my field trip was canceled due to rain. The kids were LIVID with me for not being able to control the weather. I find their logic refreshing and mysterious. So in their anger they planned their own little sixth grader mutiny. It was a fabulous day!

I am taking my after-school group to Chinatown on Monday and I am very excited. Hopefully all will go well.

Spring comes MARCHing in...

I will strike a deal with you Mom and Dad. I will update my blog every time you do. You are not allowed to harass until yours is more recent than mine. So here is some of what I have been up to. Warning: my life is pretty busy with a lot of the same stuff so if I run out of events to talk about then I will start sharing my opinions and we all know that my opinions tend to make Dad's face turn red and that vein in his forehead to pop out and then his speech becomes unintelligible other than an occasional "stupid liberal." You have been warned.

Here is a new picture to look at. This is mom at a restaurant that she really liked called Chocolate by the Bald Guy. They have good food and great Chocolatey desserts and the whole place smells like chocolate.

My life is very busy and very much the same. I am still teaching at MS 326 and struggling with/ liking it. We were just reviewed by the state a couple of weeks ago because we are on the state list and the city list of schools that are in danger of being closed down. It was pretty intense.

This is one of the classrooms I work in. Many people use it as a closet. There were 20 state reviewers wandering around and going in to all the classrooms, talking to some of the students, and interviewing the teachers. They decided not to close us down this year but to keep a close eye on us and require the implementation of all sorts of programs, none of which are going to change the fact that our school is made up of 98% first generation immigrants, who don’t speak English well and can’t understand the standardized tests. I started an after school program for the well behaved kids who really want to learn and progress. My co-teacher, Mr. Avedissian and I teach them about the cool places in New York and then we take them there on a field trip. Most of these kids have not left the 5 block radius around their house since they arrived here from the Dominican Republic. They don’t know about Times Square, Midtown, the Upper West Side, Central Park, the Statue of Liberty. They think of New York City and America as a very dirty grid of old apartment complexes with rats everywhere. It is fun to watch their eyes open up to this great city. On Saturday we took them to the house that George Washington lived in during the Revolutionary war right before the British took Manhattan and (attempted to) fly kites in the backyard.

I am still taking classes for my Masters degree at night. It is exhausting, but I like my professors a lot this semester. I am taking a linguistics class that I find fascinating. Both classes are a lot of work as I guess they should be at the graduate level, but it is exhausting nonetheless.

I was just called as the assistant stake camp director, which if you read my blog entry about girls camp last year, you will know that girls camp for the Manhattan girls is an adventure all its own. I am excited but can’t get really busy with it until this school year is over.

I still work as the assistant shift coordinator and the Spanish trainer at the temple and I absolutely love my Saturday mornings there. I always said that I wanted to live in a place where the church was still growing and needed more willing hands. I always thought I would find that place in some foreign third world country, but New York has church service opportunities by the truckload and we are constantly recruiting. I have a ward calling, a stake calling and a temple calling and they are always needing more. I love that I can be of service.

My attempts to maintain a semi-normal social life are often thwarted but in the past few months, we threw a party in our tiny New York apartment, to which 100 people came…


On Chinese New Year’s Eve, which was also conveniently Ash Wednesday, a couple of my friends and I went down to Chinatown and had some real Chinese food. Then I took the next day off of school for….cultural reasons. Then another friend of mine had a Chinese New Year Party. It was a lot of fun. Hooray for China!!!

This is the wall of my friends house. They painted it with chalkboard paint and they change the scene depending on what is going on in their lives. This is their Chinese new year scene.


We celebrated Pi Day (3.14 or March 14) over at a friend’s house with pizza pie and real pie (of which I could not partake because lent doesn’t end until Easter).

I still live in Harlem, which means I occasionally get heckled, I occasionally see people get their luggage stolen as they get off the airport bus and attempt to enter the subway and I occasionally hear amazing gospel choirs as I walk down the street. All in all it is a pretty good trade off.

As promised...

So I am trying to become more responsible in 2008. I would say it is high time since I am now entrusted with the education of tender young minds.

First...a painful reminder that no matter how much I will it to happen the subway will never take me where I truly want to go.

Now, BERLIN!!!
So when I went backpacking through Europe a few years ago, I never made it up to Berlin and I really wanted to go. Teresa (my sister) wanted to go as well so we decided to set out complete with all four of her little boys, 6, 4, 3, and 4 months. That in and of itself is an adventure. I have traveled a fair amount and it was amazing the difference between traveling with adults and traveling with kids. They were not at all impressed with the historical significance of the Berlin wall!!! I had a lot of fun and I am so glad that Teresa and the boys allowed me to drag them all over Berlin. I love the city, it is a great mix of old and new and has such a charming feel to it despite its rather shady history.

The drive up took about 7 hours, with one stop at a McDonalds to play on the toys. We checked into an apartment that we rented for a couple of nights. I took the boys on a walk to get rid of some of their 7 hours of couped up energy scaring Teresa half to death, (I am not used to telling people where I am going or when I will be back, I answer to no one in my life) sorry Teresa.

My travel companions.
Batman
and the stroller boys.

The next day we went to see pieces of the Berlin wall and my favorite monument that I have ever seen. It is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews. The explanation on Wikipedia is surprisingly concise "It consists of a 19,000 square meter (4.7 acre) site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs or "stelae", arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. The stelae are 2.38m (7.8') long, 0.95m (3' 1.5") wide and vary in height from 8 inches to 15 feet 9 inches. According to Eisenman's project text, the stelae are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason."

The paths that lead through the concrete towers go up and down for no particular reason. It does give you an oddly chaotic feeling but then they are all perfectly arranged.

The boys thought of it as a maze and went running through all over the place. I would highly recommend this place.
I then ate a real live Berliner, right there in Berlin. It was fabulous, but I would submit that most German food is fabulous. I like it better than French or Spanish.
We went to see Checkpoint Charlie and had some dinner in a restaurant there. When Steven and I went to the bathroom there was a woman there and we were trying to figure out which bathroom was women's and which was men's, Steven asked in German and the lady responded in Spanish that she didn't know what he was saying. That language is so useful!! I use Spanish all the time.
Here is the famous sign that you would read as you passed through the wall to the soviet side.

Here is Nathan posing with a "guard" with Checkpoint Charlie in the background.
The next day we went and saw a piece of the wall that is still in place. History: At the end of WWII the allies (The US and the Soviet Union were allies) split up the occupation of Germany but they both wanted a piece of the capital city, Berlin, even though it was in the middle of the Soviet side. So they split it up but it was still one city and people worked on one side of the line and lived on the other, they shopped on the different sides and could pass easily no questions asked. The tension between the Soviets and the US increased and one night without warning the Soviets put up barbed wire, followed by a wall on the border, closing off the western half of the city to all the surrounding area, separating families, friends etc.

This is how it looked. The shabby white wall closest to the camera is the border wall with us on the Western side, behind it there is the death strip, sand and land mines and electric fences and barbed wire, followed by the inner eastern wall.
This is to show how tall it was.

We watched some videos in the museum and it was just so crazy and sad for the people, especially those in Eastern Berlin who were going to be occupied by a starving country. The US and the USSR used their position in Berlin to show each other that they were better and that the other did not have any power over them. I loved Berlin and all the history there.
Thank you Teresa and the boys for a great trip.