FINALMENTE!!!

Wow… I know I have not written for all of  the past, shall I say three weeks. Not to worry though I am back in civilization and have so much to update everyone on. Where do I even start… The 7.5 mag earthquake, or the 9 hour bus trip to Mayan ruins, or my extreme food poisoning or the new treatment for Rufino ( the young man with the genetic skin disease)… SO MUCH TO TELL… I will start with a small story about my friend Andres that will attempt to describe my excitement the past couple of weeks and how I feel right now!!!!
                So I have this friend Andres, very nice Guatemalan man that has taken my friends and I around Antigua to show us all the traditional Guate ways. That sounds a little politely incorrect but you get the idea. Anyways, the other day Andres was talking to me about how my Spanish is improving and I just got so excited. I feel like I take two steps forward maybe one back then three forward and then 2 back and so on and so on. As I say in Spanish “Depende en el dia”. But Andres is also practicing English so we take turns on which days we will speak each language. As I said the other day Andres told me, “You know Courtney, sometimes you just get so excited and I can neither understand your English nor Spanish so I just listen for a time that way I know what time we are meeting.” I believe my mom and everyone else has told me to slow down when I am speaking especially on the telephone… I just can’t help it guys, I get so excited!!! This is how I feel right now! I am bounded and restrained by my keyboard! Help… I am about to explode with excitement and happiness! Poor keyboard, I am trying to type so fast it just sounds like I am pounding on it. Anyway done with my side rant! Ok, here is the plan since I am so scatter brained I am going to start with the week of my demise…

It was a Sunday night… I had a lot of homework to do, I already ate dinner and well I was still hungry. So I decided ok, I’ll have a fruit smoothie. Drank the fruit smoothie, started my homework, tried to do my homework and did not finish my homework. Productivity level here is minimal. Anyway around 10 pm I started having shooting pains through my stomach and ribs. I went home decided to just go to bed and then proceeded to lay wide awake with shooting pains for about an hour. I will not go into gory details but I proceeded to violently throw up for the next 5 hours. I have never felt so horrible in my life, I thought well this is the rare disease taking over my body and I might just die in this tiny bathroom with only my vomit to keep me company. After about 3 hours my host mom opened the bathroom door, let out a small scream and closed the door. Come to find out she thought I was borracha(drunk) and decided not to help me. Later that morning she apologized after she realized I was very ill. The rest of the day was spent in my bed, drinking manzanilla tea. I kid you not everyone in Guatemala thinks manzanilla tea is a fix all… It is good but definitely not a fix all cause I still felt like death. The rest of the week was slow, and very unexciting… I pulled a neck muscle somehow so I spent the week recuperating and trying not to cry for my parents! I will say one thing, my host mom came into my room later in the week and said, “Courtney, you are the bravest student I have had. Every girl that has gotten sick in my house has cried for her mom and you just dealt with it!” I will go ahead and pat myself on my back for putting my big girl pants on and dealing with it! Oh, I forgot to say that I have come to the conclusion the smoothie was the cause of this horrible week.

Ok enough of the barfy week! Moving on. Here are just a few random thoughts from the last 3 weeks. One of the nurses I work with, who we shall call Lily has renamed me to simply “Corny”. I like to think that comes with a good connotation. Lets see here, my Spanish teacher Nory was staring at me one class and I said Nory what are you looking at. She says “WOW! Look at all your leg hair!” Thanks Nory… I am not trying to impress anyone here! So needless to say ladies and gentlemen I have not shaved my legs since I arrived in Guatemala! No judgment, I am getting in touch with my natural side. Ok now on to the weekend or one of them in the last three weeks. I decided to go out dancing with the girls. Now I was thinking ok salsa here we go. Salsa would have been a luxury, no it was SWEATY, HOT, SMELLY, and everyone was dancing about 2 cm from the next person. There was no room for Jesus, come on people do we not remember our eighth grade dances. Ok side note: I remember one of my 8^th grade dances. That very awkward time of your life… And my dad happened to be at this dance, cannot remember if he was a chaperone or what but the kid I would never have wanted to dance with in my entire life asked me to dance right in front of my dad. I hesitated to respond and then I got the eyes. And of course had to dance with the kid. Anyways side track but needless to say I did not like the dancing. Let’s see in the course of the night I was told that I am so special and different and that I should be this kids girlfriend, and I was asked to get married. The Latin charm did not work on me so no worries family I am not getting married or engaged nor do I have a boyfriend.

Ok on to bigger things. It has been a while but reach into your memory for the blog about the young man named Rufino. I will now tell you the whole story of Rufino, the sad parts, the good parts, the frustrating parts and the unfair parts. Rufino was born 23 years ago in a small town called Buena Vista, which is situated about 10km outside of Antigua. Buena Vista is positioned partially on top of one of the mountain ranges and draws most of its income from farming. Here goes the sad part. Rufino was born via incest. His father raped his brother’s daughter and that is how Rufino was born. She fled after he was born and he is now left with no mother to take care of him. Fortunately for Rufino, he has six other brothers that have tried to help maybe not with the most valiant and dedicated effort but none the less have tried. When I met Rufino, he was sitting outside, in pig manure and in the sun. His three small cousins all around age 8 where playing around him but not including Rufino. I sat near Rufino but he really didn’t talk with me much. After about two weeks of calls and lots of emails we got Rufino a Dr. appointment in the city with one of the top hospitals. Our journey started at 4 30am to pick him up and ended mid-afternoon. We took him to breakfast at the lovely McDonalds for some fine dining. In reality nothing was open but anyway. The doctor apt went well. The first visit our primary doctor started to put a team of doctors together for Rufino’s care. In one visit he already had 4 doctors working for him. After the first apt he had about three after, one with a geneticist, one with an eye doctor and another with a dermatologist. Immediately we started antibiotic eye drops and a special cream from Mexico for his body. He was to implement the total body cream and eye drops as a first step. Along with the treatment we started implementing more water consumption, less sun exposure and more bathing. Within about two weeks Rufino looked like a completely different person. We think that since Rufino has such a rare genetic disease, the cross-breeding expressed two recessive traits that were Ichthyosis. Anyway the science isn’t important but his future care is. I will be creating a documentary of Rufino’s life and a hope fund for him to continue treatment and support to ensure a more comfortable pain free life. About two days ago, I went up to his house and brought some banana bread and orang juice (his favorite) and just talked with him. He sat right up when I came in and started talking with me immediately. It put a smile from ear to ear on my face to see him perk up so fast. Usually he is really shy but, he talked with me for about 15 minutes and then I was on my merry way and couldn't help but be happy. So I will let all of you know but there will be a hope fund started for Rufino so he can continue treatment and improvement.

Ok now on to some lighter stuff!  My trip to Tikal (Mayan ruins and pyramids)! So this trip is one of our school provided field trips! Great I don’t have to do any planning… I just have to make sure I get my butt on the bus at the right time. The right time was approximately 4 am! Um I cannot remember the last time I got up that early… I think maybe it was more like I couldn’t sleep and stayed up until 4. Anyway cry me a river right, I get to see Mayan ruins stop being a baby! So our bus ride was approximately 8 ½ hours. I think I slept for about 8 ½ hours. I was so exhausted and I lucked out and got a whole bus row to myself. Living in luxury now, I could extend my legs out and stretch. It was excellent. We made about 3 stops on our way to Tikal. First was called Quirwa which is ancient Mayan community that was uncovered and now a national park. The park has a couple ruins, hieroglyphs and a community center unearthed. There is still about half the park that could be unearthed but the funding is slightly insufficient. So that was our first stop. This was about 9 am. We had already drive for about 4 to 5 hours and they expected to listen to a tour guide in SPANISH! I know I have been in class but to listen to history for two hours in Spanish I was understanding about every 6^th word. Fail! It was beautiful though! Then we got back on the bus for another 1 to 1 ½ drive to Rio Dulce which is a beautiful town situated on one of the large rivers and has “beach front” property, the only way to describe the beautiful houses and boat docks. We ate lunch in Rio, they had delicious coconut bread which I over indulged and ate like 4 pieces… Can really feel that on the waist line! Back on the bus now for another 3 or 4 hours. Time here is really dependent on the driver one and the traffic two. A two hour trip can turn into a 5 hour trip with bad traffic. Like I said pretty much slept the whole trip so we finally get to our hotel around 7 pm. Beyoootiful! It was situated on the side of the river with a edgeless pool and beautiful views of the water. Our rooms were nice simple but nice and they had HOT running water with an excellent adjustable shower head. The necessities in life right… Don’t take things for granted… Huge theme of my trip. Anyway I proceeded to fall asleep right after dinner around 9 30 which I do not know how that is possible since I slept the entire bus ride but I guess my body just needed a little extra descansar! The next day was a full day of Mayan ruins and pyramids. I would attempt to describe their beauty and grandeur  but it is not possible in words. The whole day was spent walking through ruins, jungles and up and down pyramids. Which walking up the pyramids made me feel obese. I was breathing so hard… Embarrassing… I think I am growing an extra chin. Please do not be afraid to tell me! We ate lunch amongst the pyramids in the national park and continued our explorations on another overly full stomach. Hopefully when I get back to the states I’ll be tired of eating since I am doing so much of it here! Ha The second half of the day we went to another national park with more pyramids and spent the last hours of our day on top of a pyramid that overlooked the river and the sunset descending behind the mountains. In the background you could hear howler monkeys but the tranquility of the place was overwhelming. We all sat watching the sunset for about an hour in silence. It was amazing to just think about the ancient civilizations that used to live there and how they could see the same things as we could. Breathtaking. Our day ended with a delicious chicken dinner and a little bit of wine then bed. Remember that 8 ½ hour bus ride to Tikal now we have to do it back home… Gaaaah! No more buses! Again I slept for most of the ride until the last two hours when I had to pee so bad and we were stuck in Guat City traffic. Not enjoyable considering how many bumps there was in the road. Everyone, listen I know Tucson is THE land of potholes but Tucson has nothing on Guatemala. Some of the roads are so bouncy you can barely think! We got home around 9pm and we all, meaning the whole program had to do all our homework that we had so skillfully avoided the whole weekend. Late night to say the least.

Wow that was a lot to digest. But this week as many of you may know my Grandma and her friend Lynn will be visiting me in Antigua. More to come on all of our travels and adventures with the, as my Papa Clarke would put it “Dinosaurs” in Guatemala. Of course I am joking but I have been looking forward to them coming for quite some time now! I’m sure I will have some nice stories and photos! Hope everyone is well J Abrazote a todo!