Saturday, January 24, 2015
1/24/15 - Matthew Danaher
1/22-1/23/15 - Francesco Russo
1/21/15 - Kevin Lopez
1/19-1/20/15 - Cristian Olmos
Sunday, January 18, 2015
1/17-1/18/15 - Ryan Segura
Phrases of the day:
"Hey, my friend. For you 75 Quetzales."
"WE ARE GUNNA DIE"
As our day started we did not know the adventure in store throughout the day. It started off well. Father Kirk celebrated mass at the Mission San Lucas at 7:30 am for both the Guatemalan community and missionaries. After we left the church and traveled just next door to the library/ dinning hall to enjoy a breakfast of fried eggs and pancakes. Once we finished the dishes we gathered in front of the parish office to wait for our boat "outing". The Jessica set out from San Lucas to our first stop Santiago.
Santiago Tolìman was home to Fr. Stan "Francisco" Rother during the Guatemala Civil War. Father Francisco worked with the native Maya people building public service buildings and translating the New Testament into Tzu Tu Jil ( the native language of Santiago). During the hight of the fighting in the mid 1980s Fr. Francisco was martyred in his library at the church by the Guatemalan Army.
Once we took the 25 minute boat ride across Lake Atìtlàn to Santiago we were shocked by the amount of vendors and stalls that were selling small trinkets and woven products. This is when the first of the two phases came up. Every vendor you walked up to you were their best friend or mi amigo, and they always started at a high prices (eg 300 Quetzales) most of the time you could get a person down at least 150 Quetzales. After we walked through the vendors and the open air markets we came to the church where Fr. Francisco was murdered. We spent a few minutes in the room and looked at a small museum of his life and work. Most of us walked around the town and shopped till around noon when we got back on our boat and started our journey to Panechelle.
This is where the story gets good.
Our "boat" which held up perfectly fine on our first leg of the journey was going head on into waves that had just began after the wind picked up. This is where the second phrase comes into play. "WE ARE GUNNA DIE". As the waves grew larger and larger and the boat felt like it was getting tossed around like a child's toy. At first it was like a bad Seaworld ride... You feel some mist and some water comes in the boat nothing major. But it kept getting worse and worse. The mist turned into full waves and many of us began to get totally soaked. Our boat began to fill up at a point, having around a foot of water in it. Kevin came to our rescue and began taking buckets of water at a time and tossing them over the side of the boat slowly dropping the level of water. This continued for over an hour. We finally docked in Panechelle.
Since we arrived a little late we only had time to have lunch at a restaurant that had a beautiful view of Lake Atìtlàn. After enjoying either chicken, beef, or fish we walked down to our boat and took the short 20 minute boat trip back to San Lucas.
Once we arrived back home we had the rest of the day to our selves. Some of us went shopping whiles others played fútbol (soccer) with some other groups at the local school.
Friday, January 16, 2015
1/15-1/16/15 - Jake Gammon
Thursday, January 15, 2015
1/14/15 - Dominic Oshana
1/12/15 - Jaime Cuesta
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
1/11/15 - Joe Ortiz
1/10/15 - Liam Maguire
Friday, January 9, 2015
1/8-1/9/15 - Andreas Padilla
Today's Friday and at this current moment we are all sitting in a circle telling stories of our day. From Ron accidentally pressing the emergency button on a light post to 5 of our group members laughing uncomfortably at the fact that their bags are still in Houston, Texas. As the first blogger of the trip, I feel it necessary to inform everyone of the hectic two days behind us. Yesterday, began smoothly with our flight to Houston being delayed 45 minutes. We thought this was fine until we arrived at our next gate to find that the Mexico City bound airplane had left 7 minutes before we got there. We spent 3 hours at the first of many customer services while Fr. Kirk waited patiently for any news. Thankfully, we were able to catch a ride with Aero Mexico! We arrived at the Aero Mexico check in. Only 8 tickets were printed out for us which granted a much needed ride for only 8 of the 15 in our group. The other 7 were able to find a ride on our original airline, United Airlines (we also learned once we took off that there were 11 EMPTY SEATS ON THE PLANE). This was the 2nd of 3 'customer services' that we were so blessed to visit. From there we headed to the United baggage lost baggage claim where we had to describe our bags. Our bags were found and put on our flight to Mexico City. When we arrived, we met up with Ms. Mekrut and her group who had no bags (we now know that they were still in Houston). Our night ended with driving to the hostel and crawling into our beds because we were so tired.
Today was day 2. Our day began our day at a harsh 9:00am. We all dressed for a day of traveling the city and walking many miles. Our first stop was the National Anthropology Museum where we saw many artifacts from the hoops used during the 'Mayan Ball Game' to the bones of Lucy (who for those who don't know is the oldest skeletal remains to be found at 3.2 million years ago). After we headed to the Frida Khalo Museum located in her former home in Coyoacan. This location was where Leon Trotsky slept while he exiled to Mexico in 1937 and where Frida Khalo died and Diego Riviera spent his final days. After we returned to the hostel and went out to dinner to celebrate Jake's birthday that was unfortunately spent traveling. He is one of the people with no bag so he got a nice birthday present from United. I now have my fellow group members bugging me about finishing so.......that's all from me for now! Thanks and continue to keep us in your prayers.
-Andreas Padilla
Class of 2017