Visit of the Parents

Mom and Dad at some ruins in Antigua.

As soon as I was certain I would be doing Peace Corps Guatemala, my parents began to talk about visiting me. From the get-go, their visit was something I knew would help get me through the two years, and when they finally purchased their tickets, I could talk or think about little else. I was so excited to show them this country I had grown to love and the people that I cared about and to give them a taste of my life here. And also, I´ll admit, I was excited to eat at good restaurants and stay at nicer hotels on someone else´s bill for a change.

But at the same time, I was also a bit nervous. It would be their first time out of the country (except for a couple little trips to Canada), their first time in a place where everyone does not speak English, and their first time in a developing country, where the safety and comfort standards are no where near what they are in the US. I knew they were going to be extremely out of their comfort zone, and I
wasn´t sure how they would handle it. I was more nervous for my dad. Mom kept expressing how interested she was in seeing the sites of Guatemala and learning about the culture. Dad just kept saying, “I only want to see you. That´s all I care about.” Well, whether he liked it or lot, he´d be seeing a lot more than “just me” and I wasn´t sure how he´d take it all. Also, I´ve been in Guatemala long enough to know that no trip ever, ever just goes smoothly. No amount of planning can avoid some of the inevitable bumps in the road.

Still, I decided to do the best I could. I pored over my travel guides, created a detailed jam-packed itinerary, wrote long and excruciatingly detailed e-mails about everything from Guatemalan food to Guatemalan courtesy, made endless phone calls to hotels and travel agencies to arrange our transportation (we wouldn´t be riding in many camionetas, how I usually get around), thought long and hard about which restaurants we´d be eating in (that was the fun part), and all in all tried to arrange every detail to avoid as many bumps as possible.

They arrived in Guatemala City at 5:30 am on a Saturday morning. We hopped right into a shuttle bus to Antigua. Although my dad was clearly very happy to see me, he was also clearly very uncomfortable during that bus ride, being unable to communicate directly with the driver, worried about the price, worried about getting cash from the ATM. He was obviously out of his element.

But it didn´t take them very long to get relatively comfortable. We spent a few lovely days in beautiful colonial Antigua, checking out churches and ruins and the crafts market, and sitting in the lovely Central Park, people-watching and listening to the fountain. We were also lucky enough to catch a procession passing by one evening, and sat a long time watching people of all ages in purple robes slowly passing by. (It had nothing of the solemn pomp and circumstance of the processions I saw in Spain; many “penitents” were munching on snacks and joking around. But it was still a beautiful site.)


The Central Park in Antigua

During that time, we spent a memorable day visiting my first host family. My parents, with a lot of my translating, were able to thank them for taking good care of me, and ate their first tortillas with a typical Guatemalan meal (they made my favorite dish for the occasion). The father took us out to see his plots and the crops that were in season. He gave my parents some of his special tomatoes, whose seeds were carefully passed down the generations. My dad, always great with children, managed to joke around with the two little kids, despite the language barrier. My parents had brought Easter treats and gifts for the two children. They were left speechless when they opened them (a Dora the Explorer doll for the little girl and a Spiderman action figure for the boy-- the nicest toys they have). For the duration of the trip, my parents spoke of that day as a highlight.

We also took an afternoon trip to Pastores, a small town near Antigua that is famous for its boot-makers. The entire main street is lined with little shops selling hand-made leather boots. My mom was able to find a crazy little pair of gray cowgirl boots from a delighted salesman and shoemaker. I ordered my (second) pair custom-made: some beautiful knee-high riding boots that would be ready by the end of the week.

Each busy day in Antigua ended with a Happy Hour. I think we all needed it: Mom and Dad for the culture shock they were dealing with, me from worrying every minute that they would get robbed or we´d miss our bus stop or some other little thing would go wrong (and exhausted from the translating).

After our lovely days in Antigua and the surrounding area, we took the long bus ride up to the cooler, bigger city of Xela, with an almost Gothic feel to it. We´d be based there to visit my site and schools. The first afternoon, exhausted from the trip, we just walked around Xela. We walked up to “La Democracia”, the huge local market that takes up several streets around a small park. There are whole streets filled with fruit vendors, others of burned CDs, yet others of furniture and clothes. Xela is distinct from Antigua in that it is a truly Guatemalan city. Around the central park, there are a lot of travelers and tourists, but you don´t get the feel that the whole city is geared toward catering to them (as it is in Antigua). My parents were very taken in by this enormous market where the Guatemalans in the area buy their food, clothes, entertainment, furniture, everything (there is a Super Walmart in Xela, called Hiper Paiz here, but most locals still shop in the markets).

The next morning we got up early to await our taxi to my town, (In the end, we arranged a taxi driver for the whole day, rather than wasting hours waiting for buses or trying to drive a rental car amongst the ruthless Guatemalan drivers.) We drove briefly through my municipal town, San Francisco el Alto, which is reported to have the biggest market in Central America, just to get a glimpse of it. Then we continued north to one of the villages that I work in to visit the elementary school where I teach English once a week. As soon as we entered the gates of the school, we were greeted by lines of elementary students applauding us. All of the classrooms were festively adorned, with “Welcome Leoti´s Parents” written on the white boards. The director and his wife (who is the director of the middle school where I teach in the afternoon) welcomed us into the office and served us tamales, one of the more special Guatemalan dishes (a large steamed dumpling made of soft rice with a chunk of meat and sauce inside). Then we visited each classroom, where many students presented us with gifts. My parents spoke a little about Montana and life in the US in general, and I had the kids sing the English songs they were learning. I knew we would get a warm reception there, but even I was a bit overwhelmed by the extent of their welcome.

When we finally got away, we at last arrived at my town. My host family was waiting for us, with lunch prepared (though by now we were all pretty stuffed). We all ate lunch together, and again many thanks and welcomes were exchanged. Gratefully, my host brother who is the English teacher at the Institute and studying English at the university, showed up, and for once I got a break from translating. I showed them my area of the house, and after resting briefly, we walked around town. There was no formal class at the Institute because they were celebrating their Anniversary, but there were sports activities going on. I was invited to play in the female teachers-versus-students basketball game, where for once I made my dad proud as the star basketball player (being a good head taller than everyone, and having had more formal basketball training, even if it was in 8th grade). If anything, everyone laughed a lot, and I´m sure it was a site for my parents, watching me play basketball on a team of women in traje and high-heeled sandals against tiny sixth grade girls. We walked around some more, meeting other familiar people in my town and attracting lots of stares from my students (and pretty much everyone... not just one gringa in town, but THREE gringos! That´s headline news). We watched a bit of a soccer game, took a bunch of pictures with my host family, and then finally headed back to Xela, exhausted.

The next morning we took off for a few blissfully relaxing days at Lake Atitlán. We stayed at a gorgeous isolated hotel, perched on a cliff overlooking the lake and its three stunning volcanoes, surrounded by lush gardens and so many delightfully little nooks to sit and relax that it´s almost troubling you won´t be able to relax in all of them. (The other two hotels we had stayed in were a bit on the shabby side for my parents... which goes to show how out-of-touch I am by American comfort standards, cuz I thought they were pretty swell! But this place, La Casa del Mundo, utterly delighted everyone,)

A piece of the view from Casa del Mundo.

Our first day, we devoted ourselves fully to relaxing, and I´ll admit it was a relief to be isolated at our lovely hotel, with English-speaking staff, where it was hard to imagine anything going wrong. The next day, after a leisurely morning, we took a boat across the lake the visit the Indigenous town of Santiago, where they were having a craft market. Mom was able to finish her gift shopping, and we found a little boy to take us up to visit “Maximón”, an iconic cigar-smoking “saint” or “Mayan holy man”, depending on who you ask (for more details on Maximón, refer to my earlier blog post about him). The kid ended up ripping us off, of course, but it was still interesting. We also passed through the town´s local market (where more regular foodstuffs and clothing were sold, rather than just crafts for tourists), which impressed my parents (I have seen many such markets already). I was very taken by how beautiful the traje is in Santiago: the blouses the women wear are hand-embroidered, featuring birds surrounded by clusters of flowers, and they use darker more subtle colors (sometimes the bright Technicolor trajes around my town are a bit overwhelming). If I ever decide to buy one, it will be from there. The next day we devoted ourselves fully once more to lounging, after going kayaking briefly with Dad. Still, it passed far too quickly. Late next morning, we checked out and got on a boat to Panajachel, where we caught our shuttle bus to Guatemala City.

The stairway that lead to my little room at Casa del Mundo.

We spent that night in another shabby little hotel. We flipped on the TV to find disconcerting national news of a plane crash of a plane on its way to our hometown (it was a group of high school kids from California on a spring-break ski trip). We took a taxi out to dinner, and found this recommended restaurant in the “Zone Viva” (“Lively Zone”) virtually empty. Guatemala City is an unsettling place that has been ravaged by gang violence. It is an enormous city; about half the country´s population lives there. It is telling that no one was out for dinner on a Sunday evening in a famous restaurant in the most “happening” zone. We were glad to get back to our hotel, and more than a little exhausted. We woke up early to get to the airport for my parents´ early flight. It was strange to say goodbye to them. I´d gotten very used to having their company here, and Guatemala seemed a little more empty without them in it.

Overall, the trip exceeded even my high-expectations. It went incredibly smoothly, and it felt like the perfect mix of touristy-comfortable and off-the-beaten-track reality, of site-seeing and just relaxing. I was so impressed by how well my parents took everything in stride, by how quickly they adjusted, and by how much they ended up loving Guatemala and its people, despite the rough edges and cultural gulfs. They were incredibly patient, kind and gracious to everyone we interacted with, and I was proud to introduce them as my parents. And they were given the kind of warm and unbelievable welcome that you can expect in Guatemala. More than anything, it was so important for me to show them a bit of my life here, no matter how small, so that when I speak of it, they have some context in which to understand. They have faces for the names, images of the places. They understand a bit of how I have been welcomed and taken in here, and also maybe a bit of how despite all that, life can still be lonely here because of the differences that you can never quite get past. Guatemala will always be a part of me, and I´m so grateful they got to see a bit of that part.