Guatemala Part 4 - Kayaking and Hiking

48 hours from now I will be happily on my way to the airport in Guatemala City so this will be my last post. Over the past week and a half I have done a few fun things and been able to enjoy the beautiful scenery around Lake Atitlán.

I have gone kayaking on the lake twice in the past week and a half.  The first time was a Saturday morning with two of the residents working at the hospital. The sun was shining and the lake pretty calm. As you can see, there are trees coming up from the lake that are a result of the lake rising fairly rapidly in the past few years.

 
I went out again after work one day with the other med student working at the hospital.  The lake was much choppier and it was windy like most afternoons here.

This is Mania who is another med student working at Hospitalito Atitlán.

I went hiking up the volcano my second weekend here but only brought my iPhone as a camera and didn't want to bring it on the hike so didn't take any pictures.  This past weekend I went with a large group of gringos working at the hospital on another hike with one of the nurses at the hospital as our guide.  First, we went to an area to zipline.  I did not partake but took some pictures of my colleagues.

I did walk out on the kind of creaky deck though.

We then continued our journey in the back of a pickup (I know it's not the safest thing but that's how a lot of people get around here).

We then did a short hike to the (almost) top of a hill which has a gorgeous view of the lake.

Here's one last picture.

Abigail: 2 years old

This is a very belated 24 month post that I have been writing in my head for some time! I am trying to keep things accurate to around her birthday.

Eating:  Abigail is a good eater overall and continues to go through phases of having a bigger appetite alternating with less interest in meals overall. She still loves to eat cheese and bread and carbs. We make a lot of chicken for dinner and she does pretty well with that, and loves pancakes for breakfast on weekend mornings. At breakfast, she decided she likes to have JP’s rice chex (aka “blue cereal”) to be just like him, although she alternates that with bread and peanut butter at times too. 

Abigail and I stopped nursing in late October, just shy of 21 months. She had dropped the night feeding and was down to mornings, for the last several weeks. At the end, she would nurse for just a minute or two, and then began to skip days entirely, so after a few days in a row, I declared us to be done.  I have redirected her attention to either trying to go pee on the potty in the mornings or just going to eat breakfast and she has not seemed to mind.

Sleeping:  Finally some good news on sleep! With the days getting shorter, Abigail has begun to sleep in later and later.  Most of the past year or so, I have considered her sleeping past 6 to be a victory, and now she has been sleeping in until closer to 7.  I even had to wake her up a few times to get ready to get out the door in time in early December.  She is usually going down between 7:30 and 7:45.  Naps have been decent at school but starting to be more inconsistent at home, so we have ‘quiet time’ in her room in the dark even if she does not fall asleep.  We will see how long the naps last. Unfortunately, while she collapses asleep very quickly on days she does not nap, she often will wake up within the first two hours screaming like a banshee and will need some intervention to help her settle back down.

Playing:  Abigail is so much fun right now! It has been great to see her start to engage in pretend play, changing the baby doll, putting her to sleep, or making food for us in the play kitchen.  We still do a lot of playdoh, some coloring, and books.  Abigail knows a lot of the stories we read regularly now and tells us what is going to happen.

Abigail also loves to play hide and seek, and we often play her and me against JP. She is pretty good at hiding and being quiet (with lots of coaching) even when JP tries to trick her and ask questions.  She does like to hide in the same place over and over again, so that part of hiding we probably still need to work on.

Growth:  At her 2 year check up, Abigail was 28 lbs and 35 inches or so. She continues to be well on her growth curve and we have no complaints. She is in solidly 2T sizes and some 3T in some brands that apparently run small.  

She has learned how to take off her pants and is working on putting them on as well as socks and shoes. She is good at taking off her shoes, especially in the car after we have asked her not to!  She also learned to take off her pants and diaper, so I have taken to putting a cloth diaper cover over her diaper at nap and night to avoid messes when either she does not nap or I cannot go get her first thing when she wakes up. So far she has not figured out how to undo the snaps.

Abigail got the first set of molars so I think we have a little break on teeth for a while. She is not a fan of teeth brushing but we do it twice a day regardless.

Communication:  Abigail’s language is just incredible. She is consistently saying 4-6 word sentences and seems pretty easy to understand, although we obviously know more of what she is saying since we spend so much time listening to her.  It has really exploded over the past few months and it is so much fun to talk to her about everything. She is turning out to be a silly and sensitive little personality, and it is entertaining to hear her talk to herself and her toys in echoes of us, “we going to mai mai’s house, okay?” “Elmo you have owie, it’s okay” and hugging her toy.

Abigail knows all her colors, can count reliably to 5 and often to 10, although she can consistently produce the next number in the sequence when she is given the lead up (i.e. 5, 6, 7, and…8!). She is curious about everything going on around her, so we talk constantly on the way to and from school in the car about the bikes, buses, and trucks we see. When we ask her how her day was at school, she tells us “I don’t bite Cooper today”. Cooper is one of her buddies in class but I don’t remember her ever biting him. When she sees people, she now asks, “what her/his name?” She has started to talk about the feelings of others (baby crying, baby sad). It is great to watch her learn grammar by immersion, like when we ask, “Do you see it?” and she knows now to say “I do see it.” 

Even though she talks so much and so well, there are still some toddler quirks that I love and am in no rush to correct.  For example, she says “Mama hold you” (hold me) and “Mama pat you” (at bedtime) and I just think they are so cute!  She will outgrow them before I know it so I am just enjoying them right now.  

Guatemala Part 3 - Hospitalito Atitlán

Hospitalito Atitlán was founded in the 1960s and originally run by Catholic priests working in Santiago Atitlán from the Diocese of Oklahoma City.  The most famous of these priests was Fr. Stanley Rother who was killed by the military in 1981.

When the Civil War in Guatemala worsened in the 1970s, the Hospitalito was taken over by a non-profit.  In this time the military also built their base near the hospital entrance which deterred many patients from using its services.  The hospital closed in the early 1990s and remained so until 2003.

A building was renovated and the Hospitalito moved to a new location in early 2005.  Unfortunately, in October of 2005 Hurricane Stan hit the early and a huge mudslide came down from the Tulimán Volcano nearby burying much of the Hospitalito and killing 200 in Santiago Atitlán.

After working in makeshift building, the board of directors of the Hospitalito raised $2 million to build a new hospital through donations from various donors.  The hospital used to be just south of town but is not north of town in an area that is not believed to be prone to mudslides during large storms.

Here are some pictures:

The hospital has a 24 hour emergency room, 10 inpatient beds, 4 labor and delivery beds, 5 medical outpatient rooms and 1 room for dentistry. There is also a pharmacy, laboratory for blood and urine tests, ambulance, and other normal hospital facilities. There are usually very few inpatient and laboring woman but the emergency room and outpatient clinic do see a number of patients.

Here is a picture of the pediatric outpatient room (more exciting than the other rooms):

Here is a typical inpatient room:

Guatemala Part 2 - The City of Santiago Atitlán

Santiago Atitlán has about 50,000 residents and sits on the edge of the southern spur of Lago Atitlan.

The lake is straight west of Guatemala City in the department of Sololá.

The majority of residents are of Tz'utijil Mayan descendent and speak that language at home and in most social situations. Tourism is a fairly large industry as people mostly from North America and Europe visit the lake and all the surrounding communities.  There is a street nicknamed Calle Gringa (Gringo Street) that runs up from the dock that has lots of tourist restaurants and tons of little shops selling various artisan crafts.  Most of the items are woven and embroidered items including clothing.  The women here wear elaborate shirts, usually with birds embroidered on the front and back, along with skirts and woven belts.  Here's an example:

This picture appears to be taken on Calle Gringa (with the stores in the background), but I did not take it. People are wary of having their picture taken and usually ask for money so I just avoid doing so.

Another fairly common job outside of the tourist industry is agriculture with coffee, avocado, and vegetables being the most common crops grown locally.

One feature of Santiago Atitlán that is very foreign to me after living in Latin America for years is the number of gringos who live here.  In the area where I live, there are probably 50 gringos within a 1/4 mile and there are stores in town that carry items that realistically only gringos would buy.  Last night I went to dinner at a house nearby that a gringo turns into an Italian restaurant every Friday and Saturday night.  I've been trying to avoid going but ran out of quality excuses last night.  There were about 30 people there, maybe two Guatemalans and the rest American with a few Europeans tossed in.  In all there were more gringos at the restaurant than all the gringos that lived in Tacna (which is 4 times larger than Santiago) when I lived there.  For me it was a little surreal.

Here are a bunch of pictures of Santiago Atitlán:

This is part of the garden where I live.  As you can see, it is quite different than Arizona.

These are pictures of the lake taken about 200 yards down from my house.  The lake has risen over 10 feet in the past 5 years, which is why these trees are underwater.  Historically, the lake rises and falls over the span of many years (some say that there is a 50 year cycle).  Theories as to why it occurs mostly come from sources below the lake: either the springs that feed the lake from below increase in flow or volcanic activity below the lake pushes the floor up until the pressure is released and the level slowly falls again.

Native people build their homes up at least 50 feet from the lake because they know that its level will rise.  Apparently, most of the homes built in the past 20-30 years closer to the lake were by foreigners who thought that the lake level would be static.  There are many beautiful homes that are very close to being in real trouble if the lake keeps rising (hope to show some photos of that in a later blog post).

This a view across the little laguna towards the main part of town.

 

Here's a running/biking/mototaxi path behind the hospital.

Here's the road between the hospital and my house with town being a little further.  As you can see there's not much room on the edge of the road making the walk a little more scary than one would like.

Here are some more pictures of the volcano:

Lastly, here are some pictures of the city taken from the hill above: