For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a member of the founding class of GCY Fellows placed in Guatemala.

Before I began writing this, I had spent most of the day working on a final reflective essay for my freshman seminar class. Its topic is about as wide open as possible: “describe your thoughts about the importance of a university education and experience,” yet I just keep coming back to the importance of my gap year education and experience, which has ultimately impacted me more than I can adequately describe.

What I really want to write in response to the prompt is that I feel that the importance of a university education is to help shape young people on a personal level, help them uncover their passions and prepare them for a future focused on fulfilling those passions, however; I feel that the university is not doing this for me. More than helping me uncover passions it is thrusting upon me the importance of obtaining a degree.  And while I have no objections to obtaining a degree—I enjoy learning and take a lot of pride in my work—the truth is that I still don’t know what I want to do with my life. I find myself left with the unanswered question of how to prepare for success when I don’t yet know what I want to succeed in doing.

It is for this reason that I really want to write an essay that argues that students should go to college only after they get a better idea of what they want to obtain their degree in. And it is for this reason that I maintain that despite how scary it may seem to some to step out of the fast-moving but comforting flow of the masses from high school straight on into college, it is the best thing you can do to really learn about yourself.

It was in Guatemala where I re-discovered my passion for writing, which is the skill I most want to focus my life around as I move through college and into a career. It was in Guatemala where, although in my day-to-day work with schools I often saw myself fail, I felt the most successful in trying to address global issues. It was through the development of relationships with my Guatemalan host family and co-workers that I felt the most hope, the most respect, and the most love for all of human kind. And today, it is my ongoing relationships with them that keep me from becoming too self-centered or from allowing my focus on school and my future to eclipse a wider concern for the direction in which our world is heading.

The problems of the world today do seem wearyingly and dreadfully complex, immense, and urgent. It is easy to get discouraged, but then, when I receive emails from Yoly & Clara Luz telling me that they miss me and they are thinking of all their criaturas— literally “creatures”, but with an adoring sentiment attached to it—and the time we made them ride on the deadly-looking ferris wheel at the Santo Tomas Fair; or when Ayrton sends me a text message saying he bought a birthday cake for me, his “little sister”; or when Fina and I talk on the phone and she requests pictures of my new boyfriend and gives me encouragement about my new jobs… life feels more manageable.

Really what I have come to reflect on is this: in addition to an indescribably beautiful life experience during my gap year, I also gained a brand new support system that will always be there to cheer me on and re-inspire me as I continue on my path, wherever it may lead.

The first blog post that I wrote for Global Citizen Year was one that I thought about for a long time  before writing. It was maybe the hardest post that I ever had to write because I wasn’t yet even out of the gate, and it was difficult for me to figure out how to relate Global Citizen Year to my life when I was still waiting on it to overtake and transform me.

Then it did.

And now here I am, back at my grandmother’s house in the Poconos, back where the tangible counterpart of the metaphorical basis for that first blog post actually stands: a stacked stone wall situated in front of her geraniums and hibiscuses.

Today, instead of trying to imagine what my home in Guatemala will look like, I am trying to adjust to the idea of a newly heightened presence of the color teal in my wardrobe, and how it will be to live in a world of thousands of other people my own age who are all doing the same thing that I’m doing (such as wearing teal on tuesdays, go Seahawks.)

The approach of my immediate future today versus  the approach of my immediate future last July feels like the difference between floating in a lazy river versus barreling down Niagara Falls. (But please note  that I’m not feeling lazy, just serene, and I wasn’t feeling terrified but something more akin to  moving briskly towards the precipice of the unknown.) (Alright… I was a little terrified too.)

But in terms of further comparison: 

Today: About to change my preferred mascot from the Phoenix to the Seahawk.

Last July: About to change the language of my everyday communication from English to Spanish. 

…

Today: About to move 100 miles away from home.

Last July: About to move roughly 1,600 miles as the crow flies (which I do not).  

…

Today: The prospect of my birthday+ Thanksgiving+Christmas+New Year+Easter (and more) with my family of 18 years.

Last July: The prospect of my birthday+Thanksgiving+Christmas+New Year+Easter (y mas) with my family of  18 weeks.

…

The comparison is pretty extreme. In fact, the idea of college now seems ridiculously simple! I know exactly where I’m going to live, I know my class schedule, I have a campus map, the buses run at scheduled times on scheduled routes (Unbelievable! There are maximum capacity regulations! They are observed!) and what’s more, MILLIONS of other people have done this before me! My parents, my sister, my friends have all been there and gosh, with their advice, support, and general knowledge, this feels like such a breeze.

What’s great is that it could one day be this breezy to take a gap year.

Each year and with every group of fellows it will become a more widely considered and better understood option. I believe my GCY gap year gave me things that 20 years of college couldn’t give me. A Guatemalan family. Full-time volunteer experience. Appreciation and understanding of a foreign culture. (To name a few.)

So even though I cringed at the cheesiness of my first blog post about 2 milliseconds post pressing “submit”– there is truth in it. I feel like I’ve done something to build this movement, and I’ll keep helping because it was everything I needed and more and everything I want the rest of my world to have and experience.

What will you do?

On Wednesday afternoon my sister left North Carolina headed for Germany, and on Thursday I read about the cloud of volcanic ash that a certain volcano in the land of Ice is spewing out, wreaking havoc on air travel in Europe. As it turns out, my sister is now stranded in London, but is taking the train to Brussels tomorrow and then another 2 after that in order to make her way to Germany.

Telling Omar and Josefina about this over dinner, Omar remarked, “Wow! She’s going to travel underneath the ocean then!” Oh, uh, yeah I guess so. I hadn’t thought about that whole English Channel thing.

“How!” exclaimed a disbelieving Josefina.

“Well London is in England and Brussels is in Belgium which is in mainland Europe. So they go through a subterranean tunnel beneath the English Channel, it’s like 80 kilometers!”

I then kicked in with an explanation of how they drilled from both sides with huge machines, one starting in France and the other in England. (I learned this watching Ocean’s something. 12? 13?) But even as I made whirring sounds and wild hand gestures to convey the process since I didn’t know the word for mammoth drilling machine, I wondered how on earth Omar knew so much about the geography and transportation systems of Europe. I sheepishly admit that I couldn’t have thrown out the length of the train crossing the English Channel (ignoring the fact that I forgot you even had to make your way across that rather large puddle), nor did I know right off the top of my head that Brussels was in Belgium (but maybe if you had given me a minute…) I went off to my room for the night still in awe.

A few seconds after settling down to read, I received a call on my cell phone and was surprised to see Omar’s name on the caller id.

“La-oorah, it says here that they began drilling in 1994 and it’s actually 50 kilometers long. So now we know more about the English Channel. And Iceland is next to Norway, it’s an island. I thought it was where Finland was. That’s all. Night!”

The encyclopedia! The original Google!

Josefina says, “The way you talk, one would think you’d traveled the world.”

How true. In fact I’m actually a little bit enraged that there are X Americans who can’t locate Afghanistan on a map although we’ve been in conflict with them since I was in middle school, and who have so much opportunity to go to school, make choices about their lifestyle, even travel, while Omar works so hard every day and will never be able to see the world that he clearly has such interest in. And I know that he would appreciate every step he took, because he is that kind of person. Kind and sentimental, responsible and graceful in bearing all kinds of burdens. The person who looks up and remembers that the tunnel crossing the English Channel is 50 kilometers long. I am just amazed and have so much respect for him and I wish there were more of him and I wish that I could take him to ride on the train underneath the English Channel and go to Brussels, which is in Belgium.

Josefina and Omar never cease to amaze me. Tonight at dinner while eating carrot cake that I made with Fina, she told Omar:

“Hey listen, I said to Laura the other day, I said: Don’t be jealous of the students that are coming for the summer program, even though they’re going to be staying in your room. They are coming for two weeks and you’ve been here 7 months. And you will always, always have a place to stay here.”

I said, “I’m not jealous, I’m just, you know, envious.”

“That’’s true, Laura, (‘La-oorah’, he says) you’ve robbed my heart, although that might make you laugh.”

I laughed, but mostly because my eyes were accumulating water…

“See– you’re laughing. And now you’re crying!”

“There’s dust in my eye. Cinnamon dust. From the cake.”

“Yeah, cinnamon dust, same with me.” Josefina says.

First two tears of departure.

The fellows now have just 2 short weeks left in-country. It seems unreal, because before I began my Global Citizen Year, my longest-ever vacation hadn’t even been that long. (It clocked in at 12 days.) Strange to think of my “closing time” as longer than any previous beginning, middle, AND end of a trip combined. It seems like now my eyes should be starting to look at things in the way I want to remember them–to paraphrase Vladmir Nabokov. But the truth is that until yesterday, everything was clouded by my desperate desire to be on a plane to San Francisco.

I was embarrassed to admit it even to myself, that I was simply ready to be home. Though I have lived here for 7 months, I also miss “my life.” I think I was embarrassed because I felt that I should be so in love with this place, so in love with the exotic and adventurous nature of what I’m doing here. I felt pretty bored and uninspired with myself. I was depending on my April 30th flight to carry me back into the arms of the 6 Senegalese fellows, to re-energize my spirit by listening to their stories and triumphs and successes. I’ve  come to think it’s fair to be ready to go home after 7 months, and I also realized that a lot of my anxiety was coming from the monotonous pattern my days had taken on after the vacations for Holy Week.

So yesterday, I broke the pattern and went on a publicity campaign with Yoly & Clara- just like I had done so often in November and December.

Woke up with the sun, scarfed a banana for breakfast, and piled on a bus headed for “Guate, Guate, Guate!!”–Guatemala City.3 buses and a quick jaunt in the back of a pickup truck later, we found ourselves in Camán, quite a large place, as we were to discover. With more than 6,000 residents in 4 “cantones” or sections, we split up in twos with a local authority to help lead us. Clara and I meandered up huge hills and across bridges that traversed bustling highways, taking in breathtaking views of the patchwork of fields–strawberry, string beens, cabbage, lettuce– and the double-peaked Acatenango volcano, dusted in snow (a first in the history of Guatemala, to which Yoly and Clara responded by saying “It looks just so precious! But it worries me very much…”) while beside it, angry Fuego volcano spouted plumes of ashy-gray smoke (indeed it merits the name “Fire”.)

Talking to people as they passed on the street, store owners, fruit vendors, affixing posters to telephone poles and bus stop shelters– I was reminded of the last campaign I went on with Clara. We had only one roll of tape between the two groups, so we wrapped some around a marker and set off. Then we realized we had no scissors, and so Clara, seeing a dead plant near the post with lethal looking thorns, broke one off and jabbed it in the center of the tape, successfully tearing it and creating a tool that worked for the rest of the day in a manner much more efficient than scissors. I can’t say why that stuck with me, but as we walked through small stands of pine trees smelling of wet earth, my cloud of count-down fever ebbed away enough for my eyes to see how much of this experience has impacted me in ways I don’t realize yet.

After several hours of walking, we retired to the house of a local midwife named Juana who was preparing a small meal for us. We asked to help, and she set us to work making tortillas. I belive I’ve already mentioned that I’m a terrible tortilla-maker. But to my surprise, my tortillas yesterday turned out uniformly round and flat. I’ve still got some practicing to do… but I was thrilled to have more mastery of that one special Guatemalan skill that still evaded me.

Back into the pickup truck, making a sort of fort over our heads with a piece of tarp as rain started to fall. Back into a bus as it turned into a downpour, the driver’s side wind shield wiper flopped uselessly from side to side without making contact with the glass. It reminded me of a bug that has lost a leg, but the leg still twitches ineffectually on the ground. I shrugged at the high-speed turns the driver was taking without the benefit of clear vision as his ayudante discussed the inopportune timing of the first big rain of the season. Guatemala has changed my risk-assessment algorithms.

I’m not thinking about San Francisco today. I’m singing along to the Guatemalan song playing on a computer across the room, I’m munching on green beans I bought yesterday from a woman sitting next to the field they were grown in. I’m good with two more weeks.

In November, I came up with the idea to start a “square-foot garden” in one of my schools with the help of the mothers group. I thought it would be a good idea because the school gathers donations of vegetables every week to give them and the garden would be a simple and self-sustained way to augment that program.

Then I turned it over and over in my head, finding deficiencies and insecurities to hang on to such as: these women probably know how to plant a garden already, they probably won’t want to make one in their homes, what do I know, this isn’t going to work, I’m 17 fresh out of high school, there’s no way I can lead them…

The garden started seeming like a failure before it was even in existence. Every part of it seemed like such a chore– buying the wood in the market, putting it together, finding soil, filling it, planting it, explaining it. The hardest part of all was believing in it. I have found that I’m very good at discouraging myself.

But in February I finally bit the bullet and bought the wood in the Antigua market by myself– in the section behind the vegetable vendors and the dusty parking lot , where off-duty bus drivers and their ayudantes (helpers) wash the ever-present dust from their flamboyantly painted buses. Usually (and unfortunately) they are shirtless. I don’t enjoy haggling and I still didn’t know how I was going to carry the heavy and bulky boards with me onto the bus and to my school. My anxiety level, needless to say, was high.

I finally found a vendor, and explained to him my idea. He pulled out board after board, looking for one that was nice and straight. He quoted me a very reasonable price (based off of my prior research) and then asked if I wouldn’t mind waiting while he went to go find a saw to cut the boards with. It turned out that he spoke a little English and he gave me his Spanish/English reader to entertain me while I waited for about 30 minutes. We talked on and off, a few of his friends came by and helped him saw the boards (it took about another 45 minutes) and then the latest friend to come by offered to drive the boards to my school for me! That was the first triumph.

When it came time to put the garden together, the mothers absolutely blew me away. They brought nails and hammers from their homes, and about 10 went with me to the construction site next door to steal their dirt. We planted the seeds and a week later they were sprouting in neat little lines. I hadn’t even realized how much I had been stressing about it until the moment that I saw those tiny hyper green leaves. Some mothers started asking me where they could buy seeds to start the garden in their own home. I was thrilled!

Two weeks later the promising little plant-lets were either terribly stunted in their growth, or dead. As it turned out, the soil we stole was not of good quality. It basically turned to brick when water touched it. And so I felt that I had to animate myself again, buy potting soil in the market and pray that some friend of the vendor would drive it to the school for me so I didn’t have to carry it on my head (of all the Guatemalan habits and skills I have picked up, I simply don’t have the posture for that one). I discussed the issue offhandedly with a few mothers one day and they offered the idea that each mother could bring a little bit of good soil from the mountain and then we would just replant. I put it on the back burner to bring up the next time I would meet with the mothers (which, considering that Semana Santa was coming up, could be a long time.)

But when I walked in to the school today, the garden was filled with rich soil. Of all the ups and downs, this was maybe the best. It means that the garden isn’t mine anymore. It’s theirs.

Dear Mrs. Rasnick,

Do you remember my peculiar Drama I class? You said it was peculiar because for the most part our class was not in Drama because we wanted to learn about the origins of theater, Thespes and the like. We were in Drama because we wanted to play games. I am writing today to tell you that although I have not used algebra here in Guatemala, nor history, nor even very much English, I have used the games you taught me, and used then well.

The fellows recently took a trip to Belize. We stayed in a guest house in a Mayan Indian village called San Antonio. There was no electricity, and after dark there was not much to do out there in the jungle (Really, the jungle. We saw a huge scorpion–a SCORPION– in the bathroom one night.) But the families who took care of the guest house had lots of children and were just generally the kindest and friendliest people I think I’ve ever met. And–something I did not know about Belize– they spoke ENGLISH. It was like Christmas.

Darkness fell as we waited for dinner time, and we all gathered in the guest house with two candles lit. We were just chatting, and as there were no chairs we formed a loose, standing circle. Somehow we got onto the subject of games– and Whoosh-Bong came to mind.

For those of you who didn’t take Ms. Rasnick’s Drama I class, Whoosh-Bong is a game where you pass energy around the circle using different words, motions and actions. Whoosh and Bong are names for two of the ways you can move or alter the path of the energy.

I began to animatedly explain the rules and actions of the game– to appreciative snickers from my younger audience– and then, with the ease and openness of old friends, we began to play. We passed the energy from person to person with great expression in sound and motion. We progressively added more and more motions and rules– then we decided to play it in slow motion (which was always my favorite version in drama class).

After what seemed like only a very short time, we were all called to dinner. And so we trudged out of the guesthouse, leaving behind the laughter and the energy that we had all shared to continue bouncing off the walls and the thatched roof in the flickering of the candlelight. I walked down the path to dinner listening to the tall grass swaying and thinking how much better playing that silly game was than watching TV or even listening to the radio.

Ms. Rasnick, I can honestly tell you that I know understand the origins of theater. Maybe ancient hunters did just want to re-enact their valiant fight with their prey, but I think the people at home just wanted to share in a common experience that would make the dark night a little less empty.

Love,

Laura

PS- “Whoosh”, “Bong”, “Ramp”, “Tron”, etc. are funny words in their own right– but you should hear them in a Belicean accent. It was such a good night.

“Canche! Que bonita su hija Fina!” Fina and I are standing outside the tortilleria, my absolute favorite spot in Santo Tomas. The woman speaking has coarse gray hair and dark wrinkled skin. I might say she is in her mid 70s judging by her looks but she’s probably around 60, and her agility reinforces that idea. “Blondie” she calls me. What a pretty daughter! A man standing nearby twists up his face in confusion and he says “su hija?” but then it relaxes into acceptance accompanied by a shrug of his shoulders as if to say, “Yeah I guess that could be.”

I don’t know if they really believe I am Fina’s daughter; perhaps her daughter in law, or maybe they’re just playing along with the act Fina and I have adopted, my role being hija importada (imported daughter). We laugh about it as we walk to the tienda to buy dog food for Rocky, and, inexplicably, the store clerk asks “Su hermana, Fina?” Your sister? Now, Fina and I may stick together like beans and rice but we certainly do not look alike. Maybe I’m tanner now but I’m certainly not morena and Fina likes to joke that I’m puro queso– white like mozzarella. My hair is blondish, my eyes are more than blue-ish. I think Fina was as bewildered as I was. Then the woman behind the clerk hits it on the nose, “Ella es de los Estados Unidos!” “Ah, si pues” I see, says the clerk. “Pero es mi hija.” says Fina. Si, pues.

It’s Sunday afternoon, and Fina and I are walking up the street toward her sister Gloria’s house in Magdalena, the next town over. We decided to get out of the house because we were bored. The street is angled upward and it seems that it disappears into thin air at the top where Gloria’s flowers can be seen bursting through the fence; in reality the street simply falls down a steep hill, but I always like the view of pure sky at the end of the tunnel of continuous concrete housefronts. Fina tells me that when her mother was still alive, all her sisters and brothers would head to this house around 9 every Sunday, have breakfast, lunch, a mid-afternoon snack, and dinner together. Fina says they would stay until 9 or 10 o’ clock at night, just talking and enjoying each other’s company. Since her mother passed away 4 years ago, she still has the feeling that when she walks in the door, she’ll see her there.

Today her sister steps out as we reach out to knock; she tells us that a neighbor is sick and she was going to visit her. Do we want to come? Yes. In the street we now convene with 3 other women; we pass by a 4th in her front doorway and invite her along. She obliges.

We turn and follow a narrow dirt path that runs next to the concrete wall of a house on one side, and small plots of trash and fruit-tree filled land on the other. Coconut shells, chip bags, fallen banana tree…we duck under a sheet hanging on the line to dry and then enter a rather small, dark room, a simple square of cinder block with a roof of corrugated metal. Smoke from the neighbor’s cooking fire occasionally drifts through the gap between the top of the wall and the roof. The sick woman sits up on a bed pushed against the back wall. We file in and take seats on small plastic stools, and begin to talk. We talk about her illness. (Her legs are swollen, so we discuss herbs that are good for that. Try boiled avocado leaves, one woman suggests.) We actually talk about her swollen legs for a really long time, which gives me the opportunity to daze and then realize where I am.

If I ever think that Guatemala is not so different, it might be just because I don’t feel like a visitor anymore. I’m just part of it. But when I step back and look at myself discussing poultices in this tiny room using a foreign language, when I realize that I hadn’t thought it as unusual a few seconds ago– I realize what I’ve gained here is true insight into what life is like in Guatemala. I am not the tourist who pays to take a tour of local villages which advertises the opportunity to “make tortillas with indigenous women! Play with the kids!” I live that.

With this gem of a realization, I wake back up and enter into the conversation again around about the time that they are discussing stoves. I learn that they don’t bake here because it uses SO much gas. Hence the frying of everything, hence the growth of my “llanta” (yeah, they call it a spare tire here too.) And then we go on to discuss all of our weights and our “llantas” and how the “llanta” is the real problem– none of these women mind having “un trasero”… a big behind. After a cup of coffee, they teach me a new vocab word “cachar” which means something along the lines of “to get a boyfriend”… As we depart Fina mentions to the woman’s husband that we’ll bring over some cardboard the next time we buy boxes for the Paca and then he can block the smoke from coming in the house, that stuff causes cancer.

Back down the narrow lane, and as we step out onto the street and turn to our right we are met with that vision of pure sky; an orange sherbet sun is melting into whipped cream clouds and we all stand to appreciate it before heading back home; all feeling a little renewed from the joy of each other’s company on this not-so-boring Sunday.

The other day I took a seat on the bus next to an old grandmother. She was snacking on some chips, and when she finished the bag, she promptly balled it up and threw it out the window. I was taken aback. It seemed to me like at home the old grandmothers would be the ones chastising young people for acting so carelessly. But this snapshot is nothing out of the ordinary.

And I haven’t become desensitized to this fact of Guatemalan life either, as I have to my lack of personal space on the bus or the street noise at all hours. Everywhere I look, there is an unbelievable amount of the most unappealing materials: shiny plastic chip bags and cellophane wrappers, cigarette butts and those ubiquitous, paper thin, black plastic bags that every corner tienda, tortilleria, or market stall uses. According to one article I read in laCuerda, studies have indicated that 60% of the domestic trash here is due to the accumulation of these plastic bags, which take 500 years to biodegrade. It has been calculated that Guatemalans buy 35 million boxes of cigarettes every year, and with the prohibition on smoking inside restaurants and public places, I would wager that a vast number of them end up tossed on the street, where they take 10 years to biodegrade and have enough chemicals left in them that if placed in a liter of water they will kill a fish in four days.

All of my experiences with trash here have really made me think how I took regular garbage pick-up and my city’s curb-side recycling program for granted. I also took for granted that when I participated in collecting my trash and recyclables that they would be taken care of in a responsible way, not dumped into the ocean or in a forest somewhere. A trash-truck comes around Santo Tomas once a week, but no one seems to know where the trash goes to. My guess is that they throw it on a huge mound I have often glimpsed through the trees as my bus comes speeding up the mountain from Antigua in the evenings. Recycling only exists if you contract personally with a recycling organization. With all these experiences and concern in hand, I’m trying to follow Zuleika’s lead and start talking and teaching about this issue, so stay tuned…