Everyone comes to Antigua

Or so it feels. One of the things I value tremendously about my trip to Antigua is being able to meet people from all over the world. And within my very own homestay. People come to study Spanish, travel and tour Guatemala, volunteer, and much more. Doña Olga, my host mother, and her helpers (empleadas), tend to everyone in the house and to people who rent out the apartments behind the main house.

I met a few volunteers from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Virginia, New York, Colorado, and California, a ton from Canada (Quebec and Montreal), one woman who was born and raised in Germany but is now living in Nova Scotia, a French couple, one British woman, another from Wales, one guy from Sweden who speaks about 7 different languages, and one woman who is Guatemalan but lived in Australia for a number of years where she raised her kids.

I'm honored to become acquainted with such a diverse group of brilliant people.

Bad case of a mysterious sickness

A couple of weekends ago I was hit hard with a sickness that left me with a pounding headache, sore muscles, chills, stomach cramps, and serious diarrhea. I had no idea where all of this came from. I considered some possibilities: a virus that was supposedly going around in the clinic, my immune system being easy prey to 'foreign' bacteria and germs, my exhausting trips to Panajachel (3 hours away from Antigua) and Monterrico Beach (2 hours away) all in two days, the food I’d eaten in either of the aforementioned locations, the climate….One thing I didn’t consider was the food I was eating within my own homestay.*

Other volunteers staying at the homestay had also gotten sick and had similar symptoms. One guy got hit the worst and was bed ridden for three days. He may have gotten the most sick because he usually ate the most amount of food at the table during every meal. (Who can blame him? The food is delicious!)

It turns out that we had parasites (tapeworm infection) in our system. "Eating undercooked meat from infected animals is the main cause of tapeworm infection in people." We all tried different medications. I first took a couple of Advil, thinking I just had a fever and that the pills would reduce the symptoms. They did nothing. I then went to the local pharmacy and bought some powder (to mix in a drink) that the pharmacist told me would stop my diarrhea. I also bought three bottles of Albendazole, and took a couple of Oregano oil pills. Not sure which medication killed the tapeworm(s), but I started feeling much better in a couple of days.

It’s inevitable for someone to get sick when she travels abroad, and this sickness could be from a myriad of things. If you plan to travel abroad to a developing country, be sure to bring along appropriate medications and to get the necessary immunizations before arrival.


*The homestays provided through Maximo Nivel are screened thoroughly and chosen carefully. This one incidence of volunteers getting sick is a rarity, and one that the organization has not taken lightly. The problem was identified and addressed appropriately.

New Year’s in Guatemala

Happy New Year! On New Year’s Eve I went to Central Park here in Antigua to watch the fireworks with a few other Maximo Nivel volunteers. It was such an eventful night. Crazy. And pretty scary. After the huge explosion of fireworks around 12, a few of us started to walk back home. On our way back, I began to hear songs blasting from the discotecas (discos) we passed. I knew it wasn’t yet time to go to bed. The first song I heard: “Ayer la vi, bailando por allí, con sus amigas en la calle de Miami….” (“Bailando por el mundo”) I started dancing to this catchy song on the sidewalk.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY80x-waHak

My precarious and scary New Year's night in Antigua, Guatemala

Four of us tried to get into a couple of discotecas but had no idea that they were charging. When I came a couple of summers ago they didn’t charge us anything, but this time, because it was New Year’s and a lot of people were looking to dance and celebrate, they started charging. The first place we tried wanted 50 quetzales (~$7) and another place a few doors down charged 25. I didn’t bring any money. I was with three other girls who also lived in my homestay. A couple of them started to talk to a couple of Guatemalan guys to see if they could pay for us to get in. They said they would, but only if we had a cup of the Vodka they were carrying with them. I rolled my eyes and refused. “Cómo sabemos que no pusiste drogas en el trago?” [How do we know that you didn’t put drugs in the drink?] I demanded. They were about half my height (ok, not half...maybe 3 inches shorter), had the “typical Latino guy look” with their hair spiked with gel, and were a very good-looking, built pair of Guatemalan guys. They were young, too. One of them said he was 23. They looked up at me and said, “Ay, por favor” (Oh, please), showing me the top of the bottle. It was tightly secured with a glass cap, obviously requiring some type of tool to open it, and it didn’t look like it had been tampered with. “No somos delicuentes ni criminales. Sólo nos gusta divertirnos y beber” [We’re not delinquents or criminals. We just like to have fun and drink], one of them told me.

Antigua at night

By this time, the other girls I was with, who weren’t following the conversation, were losing interest and started looking around for some other place to go. The guys didn’t catch on to this and mostly focused on me because I spoke the most Spanish. One of them said, “Espere, le vamos a preguntar a un amigo si puede ayudarnos pagar” [Hold on, we’re going to ask a friend if he can help us pay]. He disappeared to find this friend, and I was left with the other guy who started to make conversation with me, asking where I learned Spanish, how old I was, if we all had Facebooks… The other guy returned and offered another negotiation. “Mire, no chequean a las chavas que entran, y mucho menos las americanas, así que meta esta botella en su camisa y las vamos a reunir adentro” [Look, they don’t check the girls who enter, much less American girls, so put this bottle in your shirt and we’ll meet you inside].

I took a step back. These guys were crazy. I started to regret opting out of going back home right after the fireworks show with a couple of the volunteers who also lived in my homestay.  “No,” I said sternly. “No podemos hacer eso” [We can’t do that]. “Pero sólo tienen que…” [But you just have to…] “NO,” I repeated, and started to walk away with the other girls who were searching for another place.

One of the guys came up to us again and tried to offer something else, but was met with annoyed broken Spanish by one of the girls in our group, “No, tú…no quiero. Gracias mucho.” He lifted his hands, “Está bien” [Fine], and finally left us alone.

We went to a couple of other well-known spots, but of course they charged too, or were no longer letting people in because they were full. So we decided to head on home. That was before we ran into a couple of other Maximo volunteers and learned that they would have had to walk to their homestays alone (at 2 in the morning, in the dark, in Guatemala).

Here is where it started to get a little scary, and only because the girls made the situation a lot scarier than it actually was. First, we got a lot of whistles, air kisses, and cat calls from some guys who were walking in groups. Second, we tried to figure out how much a taxi would cost for one of us to get back to her homestay from the center of town (the park). She started counting US dollars out in the open, then freaked out when one of us told her that some other Guatemalan guys were eyeing her and her money. She cursed profusely. “Oh my God, oh my God.”

Part of the Plaza Central Park, Antigua

Maybe I was being too calm, or maybe the girls were freaking out too much. To me, it was really not that big of a deal. Yes, we were in a foreign country, it was about 2 in the morning, and it was dark, but not every single thing that happened meant that we were going to die. There were other people around celebrating the New Year. It was still fairly safe. We just had to calm down, think, and not worry that the worst was going to happen. I often dismiss that the worst is going to happen because I don’t allow it to happen in my mind. This could be a bad and good thing...bad because it's necessary to be on high alert, especially when in situations like this, but good because if you're constantly on high alert, having heightened anxiety, and stressing out about the worst, how can you think clearly when the worst does actually happen?

We soon headed down a less crowded, poorly lit street in the direction of our homestay, but ended up turning around and going back to a central location because we thought we were being followed. The anxious behavior of the other girls started to get to me. One guy in a camouflage jacket did actually start to follow us for about a block, but he was completely out of it (either drunk or demented, or both) so I knew he wouldn't make it that far. He scared me at first. He was Guatemalan but spoke to us in English. “You look like you’re from the hood,” he said at one point, his head boggling back and forth and his hands making some weird motions. I’m pretty sure he was talking to me. He scared the mess out of me. I was tempted to run away and leave the rest of the girls. Every man for himself, right? I didn’t know what this stranger was capable of doing.

So anyway, to end this long entry, we did end up getting home safely, thankfully, no one followed us after that, and although we couldn’t get into any discotecas, the scary events of our night Antigua made our New Year’s experience interesting and one worth telling.