Satellite Photos of Xela

Here is a series of photos from Google Earth showing the exact position of our house among seismic events and volcanic neighbors.

Guatemala City to Xela

C&T in Guatemala City, September 1- September 7, 2006

Well, our week in Guatemala City was definitely one of luxury. In addition to our king-sized bed with six pillows at the Marriott, Zone 10 (where our hotel was located) gave us access to the best restaurants in town. One of our most memorable happenings occurred by chance: Embassy personnel had clued us in to a great Pan-Asian/Latin American fusion food restaurant called Tamarindos (see photo right). However, as we were still on West Coast time, we showed up about an hour earlier than the restaurant opened. As Tyler and I were standing on the sidewalk, disappointed, trying to decide what to do next, a woman came up from behind asking in English if we needed help. Before turning around, Tyler jokingly said, “Well, you could make the restaurant open an hour earlier for us.” As we both turned around, we saw the woman who had addressed us standing in her chef’s jacket and Dansko clogs. Just the shoes alone told us she was a woman to be reckoned with. As it turned out, Titi, our chef, invited us in and sat us down at the bar of the restaurant. As the restaurant had not opened for the day yet, we were the only patrons there. But that didn’t stop Titi. Three different times she left her kitchen to personally deliver to us three incredible appetizers: Vietnamese spring rolls, crab wontons with a ginger and plum reduction sauce, and avocado and mole egg rolls (see photo left). We were definitely staying for lunch. Tyler and I both ordered tuna, mine peppered, his with Titi’s own barbecue sauce. Based on the food, we of course had to order dessert – a chocolate and raspberry mousse (see photo right). The food we had at Tamarindos was some of the best food we’ve ever had, anywhere. Best yet, Titi has family in Xela, where we will be living, and promised to come over to our place for dinner when in town. Also, she said if we wanted, she could arrange to have fresh fish delivered to us in Xela. Therefore, as you can gather, Titi is the most important person we have met in Guatemala thus far. (No offense, Mr. Ambassador.)

When we weren’t sampling the food, Tyler was museum trekking while I was meeting the administration and teachers of IGA (Instituto Guatemalteco-Americano) Guatemala. IGA-Guate is the main binational center that, in addition to the US State Department, is sponsoring my Fellowship. As IGA-Guate is better staffed and more established (they’ve just celebrated their 60^th anniversary), it was decided that I would provide support to their satellite campus at IGA-Xela (http://www.igaxela.org) . However, before leaving Guate, I spent about five days familiarizing myself with the chain of command and the infrastructure of IGA. I also had the opportunity to observe two classes. IGA’s greatest challenge is one I suspect any school in the US wished they had. They are having a hard time meeting the demand from students for English classes. The main reason is that there are not enough well-trained or educated English teachers in all of Guatemala to teach them. Anyone in Guatemala who speaks English well is most likely from an affluent family. Therefore, anyone who speaks English probably expects to make more money than what an English teaching position can pay. However, there are some English-speaking university students who wish to make a little extra money on the side, so they look for teaching jobs at IGA. While this does help IGA solve their teaching shortage, it is usually only for a short time – until these students finish university. My job in Xela, then, where they hire a similar pool of teachers, is to observe these students in their English-teaching roles, provide feedback, and arrange for bi-monthly teacher development courses. While I applaud IGA’s creative and efficient way of supplying themselves with better-trained teachers, I’m interested to see how receptive these student-teachers will be to teacher development, especially if teaching may not be their chosen profession. We’ll see!

IGA is definitely on the forefront of English teaching in Guatemala. In addition to the one-on-one training and smaller workshops they provide for their own teachers, they also hold an annual, national English teaching conference. I was really impressed with the line-up of plenary speakers they have coming who were seminal authors in our studies at MIIS: D.H. Brown, Kathleen Graves, and the Monterey Institute’s own Kathi Bailey! Tyler and I will be in Guatemala City for the conference in November as I, too, will be presenting, so we hope to show Kathi our favorite food spots. From what I have seen at IGA-Guate, I expect to have a satisfying and challenging professional experience here in Guatemala.

Quetzaltenango (Xela), September 7-September 14, 2006

We made it! Tyler and I are now settled in Quetzaltenango, the largest city of one of Guatemala’s 22 ‘departments’ (or states). Quetzaltenango is Guatemala’s second largest city, with a population of about 300,000, and is the capital city of the department with the same name. Luckily for us, locals call the city Xela (Shay-luh). However, as we have been instructed, Xela only refers to the city, not the department.

Xela looks like many Latin American cities in that its downtown is a grid of single-wide, one-way streets with “Avenidas” running north and south and “Calles” running east and west. Some of the streets are still paved with cobblestones, which, in addition to their narrow width, is a reminder that the streets were not originally made for cars. On many streets, cyclists and pedestrians alike must press themselves up against the wall to avoid having their toes run over. Or, if crossing the street, you are sure to be honked at if you are not moving out of the way quick enough. But that’s life downtown. In this photo I took of Tyler (right), the steps leading to the Teatro Municipal (Municipal Theater) are on the left. The street the Mitsubishi van is heading down on Tyler’s right is Avenida 14-A, the avenue where IGA-Xela is located. The conical-shaped volcano in the distance is Santa Maria. Regan, Shelley and clan (The Candelarios) may be interested to know that the mountain all the way to the left is Cerro Candelaria.

Beginning with our stay in the “Baby Adoption Hotel”, our lives continue to be filled with ironies. My mom got a big kick out of hearing that Tyler and I are now living in the suburbs of Xela, in a gated community. We have now lost any footing to tease her about her lifestyle choice. And, the closest restaurants to our house include Burger King and McDonald’s. This photo is a shot of the street that runs in front of our gated community. The following photo (below, right) shows a picture of Tyler standing at the gate leading into our residential area, “Las Fuentes”. As you enter the ‘compound’(see photo below, left), the first looped driveway on the right is where you’ll find our house sandwiched between, Don Jaime’s house, the architect who built all the houses in the complex, on the left, and his office to the right. Further down the main road is all the other houses in the complex. Therefore, even within the compound, we are somewhat segregated from our neighbors – affluent Guatemalans. Below is a photo tour of our new home away from home and the surrounding grounds.

One of the 'fuentes' for which the neighborhood is named:

Tyler in front of our house:







The patio off the guest bedroom:

Tyler in the living room/dining room.


Our home office:


















Our bedroom:













The Master Bath:


The guest bedroom (hint, hint):















The not-Tyler's-dream-kitchen and breakfast nook:
















The view out our front door (from the living/dining room:














Independence Day weekend in Xela, September 15-17, 2006
This weekend is a long, three-day weekend here in Xela (and longer still for students). The country celebrated Independence Day on Friday, September 15^th, but Xela makes a week’s holiday of it. Beginning on Monday, the 11^th, starting with the primary students, school marching bands parade through the streets of Xela. (It’s the only time you can safely walk through the streets and not get honked at.) Each following day, an older group of students from different schools march through the streets, some accompanied by their school’s "reina de belleza" (beauty queen). The week culminates in the crowning of Queen Guatemala and hordes of people make their way to the ‘Feria’ for food and rollercoaster rides. The streets downtown and around our neighborhood are eerily quiet at this time (as noticable in the street photos above).

Tyler and I decided to take advantage of most people being at the fairgrounds to do a little grocery shopping at the “Mercado La Democracia”, the largest open air market downtown. Try to spot the meat department, the fish market, the spice aisle and the produce section in the photos below.

Pick up trucks make for impromptu market stalls. You can find everything from plants, to underwear, to stuffed animals...

There are soooo many wonderful photo opportunities at the market, but we are always cautious when taking photos. Either we take photos of people not looking at us, or we take photos of people after having asked their permission (and a number don’t grant us permission). We are particularly cautious about taking photos of children as many Mayans believe white people are there to steal their children. This may have some truth to it in that, as we mentioned before, there is some question as to the origin of some of the adopted babies coming out of Guatemala. The issue goes back to the time of the Civil War in Guatemala (only ten years past) when army personnel and others found it lucrative to sell kidnapped Guatemalan babies to foreign adoptive parents. Of course, the adoptive parents most likely had no idea the children had been taken from their families. They only knew (or believed) they were ‘rescuing’ children from the horrors of war. I heard one woman say, as Tyler and I were walking by, to a small child accompanying her who was getting a little out of hand, “Be careful. They’ve come for you.” She smiled at me, making me believe it was a disciplinary tool. So as we can ascertain, we are perhaps the Mayan equivalent of the boogie man. However, most people we have had interactions with, once they realize we speak Spanish, have been friendly and accommodating. But who wouldn’t want to photograph Guatemalan kids? They’re just so darn cute with those big brown eyes, long eyelashes, and wide smiles.

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Portland to Guatemala City

As always, we enjoyed the past several days hanging out with our guide to local food in Portland, Eve. We put our stuff into a storage unit, ate lots of food, packed our luggage for Guat, and ate lots of food. We made sure to have plenty of Mexican, Thai, Indian, Italian, and,of course, locally grown organic at one of Portland’s finest restaurants, The Farm, knowing that the form these foods come in may be completely different in Guatemala or simply unavailable. (Yes, Guatemalan food is quite different from Mexican.) Thursday, August 31 We left the US with A TON of luggage (see photo). We checked a total of 6 items, one of which was oversized, 3 of which were overweight. (Kind of like how we were feeling after grazing through Portland’s eateries.) Tyler’s bike box was just 1 pound short of having to pay an additional $100 – SHAZAAAM! High 5! Thanks to Eve’s neighbor Susie for lending us the bathroom scale. We ended up paying $400 bucks to ship all the extra luggage, but we expected it. You either buy new stuff, or schlep your old stuff to the new place. And, the cost of shipping personal items was covered in Cris’ stipend. ☺

The flight from the US to Guat was uneventful. We like uneventful when we’re flying. The crew ran out of customs forms on our plane, so we were told to get some at the airport. Allrighty, then. Upon disembarking, we collected our 409 lbs. of checked luggage, and pushed a groaning cart toward the exit. Two customs officers asked us for our declaration form, which we were hoping to get from them. They sort of looked at each other, looked around on their empty counter, shrugged, and waved us through. KA-CHING! Did someone say, “No waiting”?

We were met at the airport exit by US Cultural Affairs Officer Erica Thibault who accompanied us to The Mariott of Guatemala City, known locally as “The Baby Adoption Hotel”. We’ve been here for less than 24 hours, and we’ve seen between 20 to 30 foreign couples in the lobby holding little Guatemalan babies. Guatemala has no laws regarding adoption by foreign parents. So, for example, while the average number of Mexican babies adopted each year is around 50, the average in Guatemala is 2000. However, what first appears as a warm and cozy proposition (Oh, look at the cute babies. Isn’t it great they’re getting a home!) actually turns out to be one of Guatemala’s most pressing human rights issues, with little protection for the birth parents and allegations of some babies being stolen for adoptions. (For more information on the topic, check out the following site: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/879859.stm) So, anybody who knows us and knows our position on having kids, the irony is not lost on them that we have randomly ended up at the principal staging area for “Operation Adopt a Guatemalan Baby”.

Friday, September 1, 2006
Cris met with Erica Thibault and Public Affairs Officer David Young. Later in the afternoon, she met with the US Ambassador to Guatemala, James Durham, in his palatial home. Meanwhile, I meandered through the city to do some bicycle recon. I would have gone directly to my destination, but despite having a map, I got lost several times, causing the meandering. The city seems fairly normal: For example, there’s a big-city bustle, there’s a major pollution problem, drivers are aggressive toward non-motorized traffic. The architecture and behavior of drivers is familiar if you’ve visited Latin America. What surprised me was the amount of heavily armed guards, not those in front of banks but standing in the parking lot of Wendy’s with a giant shotgun or guarding a typical-looking office building with heavy firepower, for example. For a look at the typical type of shotgun you’d see in the streets here, take a look at this photo I pirated from someone else’s site.

One of the most common tree plantings here along city streets between the sidewalk and street is a giant ficus. If you don’t have a ficus benjamina in your house, then you certainly saw one on your last trip to the dentist’s office (see photo right). But imagine this same tree 20-40 feet high. I also saw a schefflera arboricola (see photo left) which I’ve only seen previously in pots, and here they grow with trunks 2 – 3 feet in diameter with root systems 10 – 15 feet wide that rip up the sidewalks and streets. AWESOME! (Stories of street crime have prevented us thus far from taking our cameras out onto the streets to take our own pictures. We’ll be much more at ease once reaching our town of Xela.)

We also met journalist and English Language Fellow Karen Macklin for lunch at Sophos Café (also the best bookstore in town). They had sencha! And lapsang souchong! We had really yummy smoothies – check this out – yogurt, banana, cardamom.

We travel to Xela this Wednesday and we'll post another entry shortly after then.