Blog #159: Guatemala

A year ago, I was in Guatemala.

Between Timehop, Facebook, and Snapchat "memory" notifications, it's difficult to forget.

For the past week I've been flooded with pictures and videos from my time in Guatemala, and despite how much I'm enjoying my internship and being in Chicago, I long for my month down South.

I know it's a very cliché, or as we kids these days say, "basic" thing to say, but the reason I miss Guatemala so much is because I was genuinely living my best life there. (I'm basic, sue me.)

My days there started at 6am, when I would wake without an alarm, feeling well rested. I'd throw on a sundress, wash my face, and make my way downstairs for a fresh breakfast prepared for me by my host family's maid/cook. After chatting with the other students staying in the same home as me, I'd walk down the cobblestone streets, past faces and fruit stands and shops that soon became familiar, to arrive at Centro Linguistico Maya, the independent school where I was studying Spanish.

Many people don't understand exactly what I was doing there, because I didn't gain any college credit for my Spanish courses. It wasn't a scholarship program, a school program, or any program at all. It was simply an intensive Spanish school in Antigua, Guatemala, and I was just a paying student, attending purely for the sake of my personal desire to learn Spanish.

I had six hours of Spanish class a day, with just me and my private tutor, Ana. Ana didn't speak a work of English, which was a blessing in disguise, because there was no easy way out. If I didn't understand something she said, instead of translating it into English, she would continue explaining it in Spanish until it made sense to me. This was the best way to learn the language, because it forced me to think in Spanish, not do constant translations in my head.

For the last hour of each session, we'd play Scrabble (in Spanish of course), and I won every game. I credited this to the many games of Scrabble I played throughout my childhood with my mom.

*One time in the middle of our Scrabble game there was an earthquake, and Ana ran to the doorway screaming at me to join her. (Apparently a tall doorway is the safest place to be.) Lost in thought, I didn't realize the earth was quaking until the Scrabble tiles started to shake, but luckily it was not severe. Our game proceeded afterward as usual.*

After another Scrabble win under my belt, I'd flounce home to a warm lunch waiting for me on the table. Ana assigned me homework every day, even over the weekends, so I'd head to a little coffeeshop afterward to study vocabulary and conjugate some verbs. My afternoons were free, and I had the joy of filling them with various activities.

I went to the gym like clockwork, volunteered at a home for displaced children from the volcano eruption that happened just days before I arrived, sat in the city square, went to the market, and occasionally took a salsa class or two. Not once in Guatemala did I feel rushed or forced to do something, and that was a beautiful way to live. After dinner and usually another trip to the gym, my friend Luis and I would walk a couple blocks to our friend Lili's house to go grab some drinks and go salsa dancing. (With the gym a 30 second walk from my house and our favorite salsa club right next door, it was difficult to resist either.)

A couple of weekends, I traveled around to different parts of the country.

The picture below is from a place called Semuc Champey, and I can confidently say it is one of the most beautiful places I've been in my life. Here I jumped off cliffs, swam through a dark cave carrying a candle to light my way, made some great friends, and stayed in an outdoor hostel with no electricity. It was unreal.

Another weekend, Lili, Luis, and I took a trip to Lake Atitlan, a lake found in a large volcanic crater surrounded by active volcanoes. Sitting in kayaks on the lake, surrounded by mountains and volcanoes and waterfalls, I remember the three of us just staring at each other with mouths wide open. We couldn't formulate words, but we all knew exactly what the other was trying to say. I'm not one to easily shed a tear, but there in that moment, tears fell.

Anyway, if you've made it this far Ally, thanks for reminiscing with me. (Also I appreciate anyone else who is reading this, but I have one very consistent and responsive reader, and that's Ally.) Does it make a little sense now why I still can't get over Guatemala? I was super fit and active, my Spanish skills were getting noticeably better literally every single day, the weather was always perfectly warm but not hot, I danced salsa on average six days a week, I was independent and didn't have any restrictions on when/where/how to do things, new friends were everywhere, I always felt well rested, some of the world's best coffee was being grown within a kilometer or two of my home and I drank it alllll the time, I never wore makeup (ever), I had all the time in the world... I was in my element.

In fact, I guess one could say I was living my best life.