Loving Life

Welcome to Guatemala! I just need to start by saying how happy I am to be in a country where I speak the language! I didn´t realize until now how liberating it is to be able to communicate with local people in their native tongue. I´ve been studying Spanish for about 40 hours per week for the past two weeks (4 hours in class, 4 hours studying) and I´m starting to get the hang of it. All that college knowledge is apparently stored somewhere in my cob-webby brain. I still have a long way to go, but two more months of practice should help!






Since I finally have access to my photos (thank you CD burner man!) I wanted to share images of the last month of my life... Above, those are Lidia´s hands. Lidia is an amazing Mayan woman that I met in the local market here. I visited her house, met her family, and have spent many hours sitting in the market just talking to her. When I´m done officially studying Spanish I will live with her for a week or so and she´s promised to teach me vegetarian Mayan cooking and weaving, like she´s demonstrating for me there. She is amazing, and I´m looking forward to the experience very much!

This is San Jose El Viejo, my Spanish school. You can´t see my classroom, but it´s a sweet little two-person open air room with a table, two chairs and a white board. Oh, and a big, adorable golden lab named Tonka. My teacher is fantastic, and her name is Aura but you say it something like oudda.

These are the adorable faces of enthuastic Guatemala kids. They live in the hills above Antigua, and I have a dozen other equally cute photos like this of them smiling, laughing and clamoring towards my camera. I fell in love a thousand times that day...

This was my house for four days while I stayed at Earth Lodge. It was SO fantastic to sleep in a tent overlooking THAT. I mean, check that out. Oh, and it didn´t hurt that they put a futon matress inside and about 6 nice warm blankets. And when I woke up one of the volcanoes was spewing ash into the air. It was delightful and I´m sure I will go back to stay in ¨my room¨ again soon!

This is what a typical Guatemalan family looks like. The mother was probably around 20 years old and she had three kids with her. This is how they dress every day. It is so beautiful, and I´m constantly in awe at all of the color and the tight family bonds in this country.

One of the really fantastic things about traveling is that you get to meet amazing people from all over the world. People who have also chosen to spend their time, energy and money exploring another country. At left are two of my favorites, Christine and Renee from the good ol´ USA.


I mentioned in my last blog post that I made a quick stop in the States before heading to Central America. Pictured above is my ¨New England¨ family: (l to r) Fran, Heather, Chris, me, Steve, Beth, and Lorrie. I didn´t want them to feel left out by not making my blog!

Then I stopped in Los Angeles for a very full 36 hours. I stayed with Meredith & Lou, two of the nicest people that you could ever know. I met Meredith, an LA-based garden writer, during a media tour about five years ago. We´ve stayed in contact, and it´s fair to say that we´ve changed each other´s lives for the better.

About six months ago when I was thinking of going to Cambodia, Meredith introduced me electronically to her friend Jennifer who was volunteering with a non-profit there. As fate would have it, I got involved and spent time in Cambodia helping to execute all of her efforts remotely. In LA, she prepared a proper ¨high tea¨for us, and here it is, well spent. I should´ve taken the photo before we devoured it all! Jennifer also invited a friend of hers to visit, Julie, who is a survivor of the Cambodia genocide. At the age of 19 she ws thrown into a pile of dead bodies because she was too weak to walk. She survived, and thrived. And now lives in LA and is getting her PhD, while working as a motivational speaker. It was an amazing afternoon, to say the least.

And finally, here´s Debra. Debra is a good friend from Seattle who´s now living in the LA area. We met for a lovely sushi dinner (the one food that I was really missing!) and talked about life and love and work and everything else. Thank you Debra!

And now, I am getting ready to go to Costa Rica to do some scouting for a turtle trip next year, and when I return to Guatemala who knows! It´s hard to believe that Guatemala will be my last country before I return to the states. But I´m not ready to say goodbye quite yet. My heart is still dancing...and the avocadoes are still ripe!

With love,

Pam