Mariachi Band Outside My Apartment

Watch it till the end, you wont regret it.

Me and Jen, my roommate, were hanging out in our living room and we kept hearing this trumpet sound. We were like, "Oh god, someones taking up the trumpet and were gonna have to listen to them practice." OUr neighbors in the building are always making weird sounds.

So we look out on our balcony and down the street theres this mariachi band playing.




Yup, I totally walked into the sliding glass door. 

El Pilar Hike in Antigua

One Saturday, some of the teachers at the school (Shannon the 1st grade teacher, and her husband Dexter the 4th grade teacher) drove us out near Antigua to climb El Pilar. It is a beautiful tropical mountain setting with a natural spring. They filter out the water and there are a series of pools at the entrance that you can swim in.  

The Virgin Mary (Catholic country)

Dexter!

Beautiful roots

At the beginning of the hike its all stairs. My asthma was acting up and I felt like a bit of a pansy. The stairs were brutal though, everyone was breathing heavy. Although Dexter had gone ahead because he likes to run and us girls weren't feeling that.

Fun vines hanging down from trees. 

LANDSLIDE!! It has been raining been raining here like crazy! (Its rainy season, soon to turn into windy season) The rain creates landslides all over and apparently the side of this hill had fallen. It was scary because they mine the side of the hill right below this landslide area and its a pretty sheer drop.

Dexter left us a message in the rocks.

Sheer drop. 

I was worried. 

Mountain climber extraordinaire! 

haha Dexters message once we got over!

The pool down at the bottom! It was a bit cloudy and chilly then, so we didnt go in, but the water looked amazing!

Apartment!!

We managed to find a apartment before school started, thank goodness. We chose to live in Zone 14 (near Zone 10 where the nightlife is but 14 is safer and more residential) Our apartment is one block from Las Americas. Las Americas is a major road that has a large grassy median. On Sundays they close one side for people to walk their dogs, ride bikes, rollerblade, etc.

The apartment is up on the fifth floor, which is nice in terms of views but scary in terms of Tisa. We’ve been keeping her off the porch.

Mini tour!

You walk into the apartment and on your left are a few closets and the guest bathroom. Then you turn right and head into the dining/living room. Turn again around the corner and there’s the kitchen. I love the large window over the sink.

Further in the kitchen is the maid's room and bathroom. Memo to guests who'd like to visit: You will have your own (tiny) room and full bathroom. Although right now all that's in there is a rug. haha

View off the porch. When it's not so cloudy you can see the hills in the background.

Jen's bedroom is before mine in the hallway. Her bathroom is across the hall.

My bedroom is at the end of the hallway (Jen and I did a coin flip for the master and I won). The school provided the bed and I bought the end tables and bench outside of Antigua. I am still meaning to get a corner table and possibly a desk. I recently bought these two plants from the plant shop across the road from the apartment. One is a regular little palm tree and the other is called a Guatemalan pony tail palm. (a name I love, it’s whimsical). 

Palm tree!

Guatemalan pony tail palm!

Gratuitous Tisa picture

Colegio Maya

After Antigua, I spent a few days setting up my classroom and unpacking all the crap I brought from the states. (One whole suitcase of school supplies! Out of the two suitcases I was allowed.) That I already had stuff printed and laminated and ready to put up was great. It really helped with some of the beginning of the school year stress.

I’ve got a real sweet group of kids. I have a class of 13 (amazing number: enough to create small groups but not too many to handle in terms of behavior and being able to spread out in the classroom)

My school provides me with a desktop computer, projector and ipad. I looooove the ipad, projector combo. I use it literally every day. In the picture below, I was taking a picture of the kids with my ipad while projecting it on the board. 

 Recently I had my kids work on writing by creating Wanted posters and I told them they could write one about me if they wanted (as long as there was no death and no guns). Half of them choose to write about me and more than one mentioned in their description of me that I am “usually seen with an ipad”. 

Guatema-holla!

The flight to Guatemala was incredibly short and easy compared to the flight from Tanzania. In a blink of an eye it was done. And I had good luck, to boot. When mom dropped me off at the airport, the guy at the American Airlines counter was in an especially good mood that day and even though I had two overweight bags, he just waved at me and said, “Oh we won’t charge you for that!” I thought he was joking, but he wasn’t.

Tisa had no problems on the flight. She’s a pro now at being stuffed under airline seats. Bringing her into the country was swift and painless thanks to the blood, sweat and tears that went into getting all her documents done in the states. (I had to get a international health certificate from a vet, then take it to the USDA to have them certify it. Buuuut USDA office lady was a bit of a nitpicker and told us that vet had drawn lines on the form where she wasn’t supposed to and therefore the papers could not be certified. IN order to get all the paperwork on time I had to have it certified that day so Mom and I sped all the way from downtown Richmond to Manakin-Sabot, got the vet to resign the papers, then back to the USDA office we did this all within 40 minutes. Thank god the USDA office lady certified that batch.  Then we had to mail those papers to the Guatemalan consulate so that they could certify them. Long process.

Jennifer, the school’s business manager, picked me up at the airport and dropped me off at the hotel with a welcome basket, cat supplies and a phone. I was the first of the new teachers to arrive but the rest (theres only 5 of us) came the next day.

The week after I arrived was spent doing  some intro to the school stuff, searching for apartments, and basically getting oriented.

Myself, Jen (my roommate, we decided to live together because our housing allowance stretches farther if we combine it), and the new high school principal went on a day trip to Antigua. Antigua is the old capital of Guatemala and has beautiful architecture and on old-timey feel. 

These brightly colored buses are known as chicken buses. They are old school buses from the states that are used as public transportation here. They are pretty dangerous though because they refuse to pay bribes to the gangs and so occasionally get shot up.

Artisan's market

This is the McDonalds in Antigua!

Guatemala!! New Teaching Chapter

After completing my two year contract in Tanzania, I decided to change it up and move to Central or South America. After applying to schools all over, I was hired to teach second grade at Colegio Maya in Guatemala City, Guatemala. For those of you wondering where in the world that is: It is in Central America right below Mexico. It shares borders with Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador and Mexico.

Update on a few of the other St. Constantine’s teachers: Nick moved to Guadalajara, Mexico to teach middle school band at the American School Foundation of Guadalajara. Kelly moved to Medellin, Colombia for middle school history at The Colombus School. Victoria decided to stay in Tanzania but switched to a different school, Kennedy House. Maureen moved to a school in New Orleans.  

End of Zanzication

Unfortunately we could only spend a few days in Bwejuu before hopping on a daladala and heading back to Stone Town. That afternoon we went snorkeling off a reef near Stone Town.

It was kinda cloudy out.

I was mildly freaking out, even though there aren’t supposed to be sharks around Zanzibar. The reef was not very deep and there were all kinds of different corals and creatures. My favorite were the spiny sea urchins. These are dangerous if stepped on but they are beautiful to look at. They are midnight black with spines that are about a foot long. If you look at them closely you can see them undulating and moving.

All the time we were snorkeling there was a little, tiny clownfish that swam in circles around Nick. Sometimes it would hang out in front of his chest, other times it would swim circles around one of his arms. He tried to shoo it away as it liked to hang about in front of his mask. (He saw also having trouble with the seal on his mask, so a small fish lurking about it was not helping). I took to swimming circles around Nick in order to find the little fish.

Snorkel!

I was super upset that I didn't have my underwater camera for this particular adventure. 

After snorkeling we grabbed some ice cream and sat around chatting and people watching. Later, we grabbed dinner at Forodhani Gardens.

Cane Juice

hahaha I promised I wouldn't put this on facebook.....

The next morning we had to head back to the airport to make our flight back to Arusha. 

Beach Adventures

The next few days really blended together. We didn’t do much; it was wonderful. We walked on the beach, poked around in the ocean, read books in lounge chairs, rode bikes down the shore, played mancala and ate delicious food, sat on the porch in the comfy chairs  and talked, laid around recovering from sunburn, and I drank a lot of sangria.  

The way we got those sunburns goes like this; We took a walk on the beach, a walk which Nick now refers to as the “Death March” because he may have gotten sun poisoning from it. (He’s from the North; they don’t have sunlight there) We kept walking and walking and walking and then when we decided to turn around, we had to walk all the way back. It was roughly mid-day and the sun was blazing.

The second night we were there, Jah really wanted to go to a local bar. I think he was the only one on duty at Upepo and therefore couldn’t leave us alone. So he invited us to come along with him. We walked across the beach, up through some trail and then a long way down the main road until we came to an obviously hoppin local hangout. It had a huge dancefloor that was filled with men shaking their thang. Nick and I hung out at a table on the outskirts before drinking some liquid encouragement and joining the dance floor.

One day we rented bicycles and went for a ride down the beach. There are a few other beach hotels and then you end up going through tiny beach towns. The children there chased us for a bit screaming “welcome!” and “hi!” and trying to grab Nick. We biked through a tire graveyard and stopped everynow and then to pick up shells and investigate.

The tidepools were also fun to investigate. There were little hermit crabs, regular crabs, all kinds of little fish, and various other sea life.

Zanz Cont'd

The next morning we got up and visited the House of Wonders. This is a massive building right across the street from the wharf area. It originally was a palace for a sultan of Zanzibar. Now it houses the Zanzibar culture museum. We strolled through the various exhibits but the best part is the massive balcony that gives you views across the top of Zanzibar. It is lovely.

 

Later that day we hopped on a daladala to Bwejuu, a beach on the east coast where we were staying. To get to the daladala stand we first had to navigate the back alleys (thank goodness for Nick) Once we got there, we spotted the Bwejuu daladala and hopped on. And thennnnnn…..

Nick's hardcore face. 

THE ONE AFRICAN RIP OFF! This guy hops on and tells us to pay for our ride(we assume he’s the daladala guy) So we pay him 2,000 tsh per person and 1,000 for the luggage. Total: 5,000tsh or $3. Turns out he wasn’t the daladala guy, just some sneaky enterprising local. A little bit down the road we paid the 2,000 per person to the actual daladala guy (and luggage is free). This one was not so bad in terms of African Rip-Offs.

We didn’t quite know where the place we were staying, Upepo, was. I knew the general road it was on and I had the phone number. As the daladala flew down the road I tried to be on the lookout for the sign. Thought I might have spotted it once, but I wasn’t sure. We kept going. I tried calling the number but of course no one was picking up.

We decide to hop off the daladala, convinced that we’ve passed it. We stand on the side of the road for a while before we flag down a bus going in the opposite direction. They let us get on. I then finally get through to the hotel (they were just confused in general) Then we see the sign, get off the bus, and meet up with (what's his name Nick?) and his sidekick Jah on the road.

Take a picture with meee!

Upepo was tiny and very beautiful. We settled in, I grabbed some sangria, and we went for a walk on the beach. We ate dinner at Upepo and the food was delicious!