transportation troubles

The first day of school was my worst nightmare. I awoke promptly at 5:35 to the sound of my alarm. With the adrenaline of "first day at the big kid job" pumping on overdrive through my veins, I got ready in plenty of time, had my coffee, and was just grabbing a hair elastic from by bedroom when I heard a horn outside. Now, I live around 40 minutes from school and because the school set up my living arrangements, they also provide a shuttle to and from school each day for us driven by Raul, my buddy who picked me up from the airport. So, upon hearing the car horn, I scuttled downstairs to grab my purse and coffee and scrambled out the front door to find....nobody. I don't have a Guatemalan phone yet, and I didn't have Raul's phone number anyway so naturally I started running all of the possibilities in my head - we weren't outside in enough time so he moved on and was coming back, he was down the street and turning around, what the what the what is happening right now. As minutes ticked by the aforementioned adrenaline quickly turned into an irate fear that we had gotten left behind. Tom sat on the stoop as I paced back and forth checking my watch. After about twenty minutes had passed from our intended pick-up time I was completely panicked.

It's funny because before I left the States people asked me over and over, "are you scared?" and I honestly never was. Putting my whole life into a suitcase? No problem. Starting my career in a new country? Piece of cake. Being late for the first day of work? Now that sends shivers down my spine.

Not knowing what else to do, we set off toward Parque Central, because it was the only place where we knew to pick up a cab. Upon our arrival, at 7am, and a quick "wrack my brain for the Spanish to say this" conversation with a police officer, we learned that the cabs didn't start operating until 7:30. Super. Much to my irritation at the time, but probably to my benefit in the long run, Tom doesn't stress over these type of things like I do. So, while I was pacing, spitting, swearing, generally cursing every moment up until that point, he calmly sat by drinking his coffee until the first of the taxi fleet arrived, was quickly commissioned by us, and hit the road. With only the CAS address in hand (and no GPS), by the grace of God we found that school and arrived only a few minutes late. Turns out, the reason that Raul was not there to pick us up at 6:20 was because there was a huge accident on the highway and he didn't end up arriving until 6:40 - at which time we were already long gone. The honk that we had originally heard was, in fact, not intended for us but was our neighbor who I have since learned honks his horn every morning at 6:20. Woof.
But all was well that ended well. We got settled into things easily and have been rocking and rolling ever since. On Monday I learned that not only am I an English teacher, I'm the only English teacher. And in addition to that, there is no pre-existing curriculum for me to work off of for my classes. This means that the minute I get home, my nose immediately goes into one of the five hardback monstrosities that is the 7th/8th/9th/10th/11th grade textbook. IlovemyjobIlovemyjobIlovemyjob. But seriously, I do. All the fellow staff have been just as crazy, if not crazier than myself, I pretty much get to do whatever I want with the kids (with in standards-based reason) and the admin has been super supportive thus far. And I know, I know, I'm still living in the honeymoon bubble, but I really do think this year is going to be hard but rewarding. Oh, and transportation for days two and three have gone far more smoothly, in case you were wondering.

That being said, I will bid you all a big buenos noches because this girl has to be fresh for day four of pre-planning meetings and curriculum building tomorrow!
C.

the party's over

I write to you from the night before my post-grad unemployed streak ends. I'm really excited to get back in the classroom again, but I will be a little sad to see the lazy days go. The past couple days have been a whirlwind. Friday morning I got up and wandered around the city a little bit just to get the lay of the land on my own. Much to my pleasure, the whole city is laid out on a grid so unlike Paris, Amsterdam, various parts of Atlanta, it's really hard to get lost here. Which, as we all know, my sense of direction is my greatest asset as a person...not. So needless to say, I'm liking the city already. I wandered toward the town center, stopping in a couple old churches to admire the architecture - the churches here are gorgeous and are filled with very intense icons and statues. As I wandered I could see a set of ruins on the other side of town and so I ambled over that way to find el Museo del Santa Hermano Pedro which for a mere 5Q featured a museum dedicated to Brother Pedro, who was very influential in Antigua for his work with the sick and poor, and the ruins of an old church next to it. After long and hard consideration, I thought it was probably worth spending the seventy five cents-ish to go in. And indeed it was well worth it. The ruins gave me a gorgeous view of Antigua's surroundings and a pretty solid way to kill my morning.
Once I had seen all that I could see I wandered back toward my side of town. With a growling stomach and rain clouds looming in the horizon I opted to grab myself a quick lunch and head back to the house. That's the thing with Antigua is the weather changes an absurd number of times during the day. Wake up, it's pants and a sweater cold, middle of the afternoon, shorts weather, right around mid afternoon, raincoat weather, and then we go right back to pants and sweaters. It's a little ridiculous. But, I do love a good rain so I really can't complain. I've found that there's nothing better than sitting in the hammock strung out across our porch and reading a book as the rain pours down next to you. And that is exactly how I spent the remainder of my afternoon - which I know sounds a little lame, but with so many classes to teach this semester I've been trying to get ahead of the game with all of the novels that I'm teaching.
That evening the roomies took me for a night on the town.Tom in his ridiculous leather boots and JP and I in scarves - I honestly don't know why that turned into a thing but somehow it did. Since they're the only people I know in the country thus far, we've spent a lot of time together the past few days and developed a really quality baby sister and mother dynamic. They tease me like a little sister and look at me to hold their wallets so that they don't lose them after a few too many beers. Turns out, with a little bit of booze in them, their yoga poses get even more ridiculous and they can't keep up with any of their possessions. I can't even tell you how many times I uttered the phrase, "desculpa me, mis amigos son idiotos". Bless.
On Saturday morning we all woke up late and made very little effort to do anything productive except, of course, finding a way to stream the Auburn v. Arkansas game. I honestly thought that I wouldn't care about keeping up with SEC football after I left the country, but have since discovered that ignoring football season isn't really an option for me any more. I guess I did drink enough of the SEC Kool-Aid while I was down there. By the time Auburn was put on a weather delay (really, you guys can't play in a little bit of lightning?) Tom, our non-football fan, was getting antsy, so we wandered into the mercado to grab a little bit of dinner and then find a bar with ESPN so that we could watch the LSU game. By some stroke of luck that I still don't understand, while we were walking to the bar a carload of JP and Tom's friends who were coming to meet us happened to pass us on the street. I thought the boys were going to wet themselves with excitement as they made plans to meet at Reds, one of the few places in Antigua that will broadcast SEC football. For the next few hours we sat and I met the roomies' friends until they got bored of American football and insisted that we leave. From there the night is a blur of location after location after location. We must have covered most of the city bouncing around. Finding other friends in one bar, meeting a University of Tennessee grad and University of South Carolina grad at the next bar - both of whom were very excited to meet and argue football with a couple of other SEC fans (but really, what is there to contest when you compare them to Auburn?), then finding the same guys at the next bar, and finally (with a little push from my tired and wet - did I mention that it was raining too? - self) back to our place with JP and Tom, and I suppose mine now, friends in tow. So far everyone I've met has been really sweet and I'm looking forward to seeing more of that crowd. Now, for the rest of the weekend, i.e. Sunday, I'll leave that up to your imagination because aside from a quick brunch and some reading, I really accomplished nothing all day. And because my alarm is going off at 5:40 am tomorrow morning, I'm signing off for now to fall asleep to the dulcet tones of my neighbor's snorting (I'm talking about the pigs, not Tom's snoring)  First day of school tomorrow, I sure hope the other kids like me!
Buenos noches!
C.

greetings from guatemala

I lied about keeping you guys updated on the Great American Roadtrip. It was fun, we survived, Ester left Americanized...ish. There's the long and short of it.
The following seven days after her departure flew. I gathered my necessities, saw the people I needed to see, and before I knew it, I was trying to figure out how on earth I was going to pack for ten months. Luckily I had shifts of friends to help me whittle down what I could actually live without but didn't actually manage to actually get everything jammed into bags until about 1:30am.

Getting up the next morning at 6:10 was surreal. My parents threw my bags in the car, I checked into my flight, said a tearful goodbye to the 'rents, and was suddenly sitting at E17 trying not to think about this being the first time that I've been more than two hours from home for such a long time. But the Big Man looks out for me. A girl about my age sat down near me not long after my arrival, we gave each other the "up down" and exchanged polite smiles as girls are wont to do. We sat in silence until two uniformed security guards went coasting down the terminal on their bicycles. Without thinking I blurted out "well that's just ridiculous" because, well, seeing grown men bike through an airport is ridiculous. But that gave rise to a conversation that culminated into an exchange of contact information - my new friend having spent a semester in Guatemala already and was returning for another. Much to my luck, she had the seat across the aisle from me when we boarded the plane (which we discovered later was not actually her seat, but there were probably thirty people on the flight so no harm, no foul) and thus was able to help me figure out my customs form, then brave the customs and baggage claim together. We went our separate ways at baggage claim but we left with a promise to get in touch. Outside the airport I met Raul, the Christian American School shuttle driver and my ride to Antigua. We loaded my absurd amount of luggage into the car and took off. I quickly learned that he understood a little bit of English and spoke a lot of Spanish. Now, I took about five years of Spanish in high school and one semester of college. Needless to say, I'm rusty. I can understand a decent amount of what people tell me, or at least the gist of things but when it comes down to spitting out grammatically correct sentences a five year old could talk me under the table. But Raul persevered through my broken Spanish to tell me about the city and ask me questions about myself and my family. As we drove on the steepest mountain descent I have ever encountered he even introduced me to his wife, who turned out to be a billboard of a Guatemalan model. After about an hour in the car we arrived at the little town of Antigua. We bounced down cobblestones past colorful buildings, tuk tuks (sardine can on wheels, their version of taxis), and women balancing huge baskets on their heads. Arriving at the guest house that will be my home for the next ten months, we found the owner, Jose, and one of my new roomies, Tom. I got a brief tour, carted my things upstairs to my room, and then was whisked into the back of Jose's car to have lunch. "This will be authentic" he bragged. And authentic it was. About thirty minutes later a woman in colorful, traditional Guatemalan garb set before me a bean soup with a hulking chunk of chicken placed in the center, complete with neck and attached wing. Yum.... At first I just stuck to the soup, which was very good and when I was left with no other option, attempted to saw off some of the chicken meat. Seeing my struggle to politely carve off pieces of meat, Jose's girlfriend jumped in to help, showing me how to break it off along where the rib cage would be. Now, I'm not a picky eater, but watching that chicken crack open made my stomach do a somersault or two.
Now, at this point I've been in Guatemala for a full 72 hours and if I gave you the full blow by blow, we'd be here all day. But rest assured that I'm settling in and well taken care of. Jose, the owner of this guest house is the nicest man I've ever met and has made me feel very comfortable in my new digs. Speaking of which, have exceeded all expectation. The house itself has four bedrooms, two kitchens, and a living room laid out in a square with an open courtyard in the middle. I live on the second floor with my two roomies, Thomas and JP, fellow teachers who have adopted me into their "wolf pack". This is my first go round with having boy roommates - luckily we all have our own bathrooms so it's more like we're neighbors than roomies - but so far so good. We cook together and enjoy meals on the building's roof which overlooks the three volcanoes that surround Antigua. I've taken to drinking my morning coffee up there and the view is so unreal that sometimes I have to pinch myself. The only drawback is that we live right next door to a little carnicerita that specializes in fresh pork, like, real fresh. So yesterday we were treated to the dying squeals of today's chichurrones (pork rinds). Horrifying. But, luckily, brief.

My roomies have been great so far, seems like it's going to be an easy year living with them. We took a little adventure yesterday to the mercado, a covered maze of women and children selling corn, dried beans, rice, fruit, vegetables, meat, hair products, clothing, jewelry, chicken heads (not a joke), anything you could ever need. And today we got on one of the re-purposed school buses that run all over the country for another excursion. Without a real destination in mind, we climbed aboard figuring that we would get off whenever we saw something interesting. Right before the bus departed the "station" - I use station lightly because it was pretty much just a dirt lot right behind the mercado - two white girls about my age jumped on board. It didn't take long to spot their black name tags, marking them as representatives from the Mormon church. I watched them make their way through the bus, stopping to speak to all the riders. They reached the back of the bus where we sat and before long struck up a conversation with us. The girls were really sweet, asking us about what we were doing and where we from, offering advice on places to visit. In turn we asked them about themselves and their mission. Apparently Mormons can get sent anywhere in the world for their mission, no preference list or anything. Sounded a little intense for me, but had to admire their devotion. They hopped off the bus a little while longer, leaving us to decide where we were going to disembark. We landed in a town whose name I couldn't tell you. All I know is that when we arrived in a place that was crowded with storefronts, we evacuated out of the back of the bus. Upon exiting, Tom said to me, "don't look left". So naturally, I looked left and saw some dude peeing on the side of another bus. That's Central America for you. Famished from our super strenuous bus ride (sarcasm, just to be clear) we found a little restaurant advertising fried chicken and sat down to have some of the most delicious, cheapest, and neck-less chicken I've had in a while. With full bellies, we set off for the market which was far larger than the one in Antigua. We explored the aisles for a while, pausing to sort through piles of boots or examine some dehydrated seafood. With a pound of dried fish for Tom and a pound of dried hibiscus flowers for me (I'm going to make hibiscus tea with them - mmmmm) and a storm brewing in the horizon, we headed back to the bus. As some of you may know, college football started today. And between me, the Auburn grad, and JP, the LSU grad, there were certain priorities to be taken care of because of it. So, upon arriving back in Antigua, JP worked some of his techy magic and managed to stream the Texas A&M v. South Carolina game which took up the rest of our rainy afternoon.
I think we're all caught up now. Pre-planning starts next week for school so until then I'll be getting to know Antigua. It's safe to say I'm in for an adventure!

roomies take a bus selfie!

Oh, before I sign off for this evening. One part of our daily routine has become "Tom, JP, and Caitlin do Yoga" - I'm not sure where this came from, the roomies were doing it before I got there, but the guys like to make fun of people who take yoga and the yoga culture really seriously. So, every day we take pictures of poorly done yoga poses in various places and post them on instagram with all sorts of absurd and nonsensical hashtags. Check us out on instagram if you want a laugh at: tomjpandcaitlindoyoga
That's all for now. Buenos noches amigos!
C.

the great american road trip pt. 1

My friend, Ester, is here to visit. Native Dutchie, English teacher, world traveler, and first time visit-er to the US of A. It was a bit of a last minute trip, but we managed to pull everything together and as a last fling (before I start working) we'll be hitting the road and touring the best of the South which means that for the next month I'm going to fatten her up and teach her about democracy. Yee haw, y'all.

Our big adventure began today with a trip down to Stone Mountain Park to visit a Georgia staple. It just seemed wrong to not start with Confederate generals carved into the side of a giant piece of granite. Taking the tram up the mountain, we stood at the top and admired the Atlanta skyline and the other cities whose names I took a wild (but semi-educated) guess at. After a few photos we hiked down the mountain side, then around the base of the mountain to get back to the main park. We sat for a while on the lawn until the heat became unbearable then made our way to the car. With no real plan in mind and a pretty solid part of the afternoon left to kill, I turned trusty Julius (my 2007 Jeep Liberty) toward downtown Atlanta thinking that we could take a CNN Center tour or something along those lines. But, what we found was so, so much better. Apparently, every Wednesday night V103 and another radio station host "Wednesday Wind Down", a free concert in Centennial Park that features local artists. When we arrived around the park we couldn't really tell what was going on and opted to take a spin on Atlanta's new observatory ferris wheel. Looking down on the scene we could see a huge crowd gathering below and decided it was definitely worth our time to check out. After getting off the wheel, we crossed over to inspect the scene and found that we were if not the only, then two of the very few white people in the crowd. It. Was. Amazing. We were treated to soul music and jazz, a brief appearance by the soul train, the Harlem Shakers dance team, duets by men with reverberating voices and women who effortlessly belt out notes that I can only dream of hitting. And while it was hard to tear your eyes from the stage, the crowd was filled with people swaying and stepping to the rhythm. It was hard to know which one to watch. We also had the great fortune to sit right behind Niecey,

new friends are the best friends

our new friend, who took it upon herself to take care of us, sharing her umbrella to block the late afternoon sun - which had us sweating like a couple of sinners in church - and offering us her snacks as the night wore on. We parted ways at the end of the evening, but not before taking a handful of photos and becoming Facebook friends. It was quite the successful start to our grand adventure.

We'll be traveling a fair amount in the next few weeks, so I don't know how much I'll be able to post about. But I'll try to catch up every now and then. Stay tuned!

C.

still alive with a mediocre excuse

Somehow the summer slipped away from me. I had all of these really wonderful intentions of finishing up my overseas adventure with some really meaningful point about broadened horizons and new friendships coupled with a collage of my adventures in England and Scotland. And then I didn't get to it, and didn't get to it, and now it's July. Whoops. Guess those stories will be just for me. Fun facts about Caitlin - I really only get any kind of semblance of work done when I have multiple things on my plate. Which is a garbage excuse for not blogging but whaddaya gonna do?
Major points from the summer to get you up to speed:
1. I made it back to the States 
Safe, sound, and exhausted.
2. I graduated. 

oh yeah, we're totally ready for the real world
....we hope? 

That's right, you are reading the musings of the proud owner of an Auburn mini-diploma that certifies completion of my Bachelors of Science in English, Language Education. I have a regular sized diploma too, but it's not as cool as the one that I can fit in my wallet. So if anyone ever wants to contest whether or not I graduated magna cum laude - whabam: mini-diploma.
It was a quick four years, but some of the best.

when in doubt of what to do next,
go on a cruise to the bahamas

3. I'm living the post grad dream
Moved back in with my 'rents. Searching for a job, cruise to the Bahamas, a bachelorette party with the exact same itinerary as my senior prom, three weddings, panic over lack of job, Atlanta adventures with old friends, napflix binges, and more naps. This is the first summer that I've been totally jobless since before high school. Exhausted, burnt out Caitlin thought that it would be an excellent idea to take some time off to find a job and have some time to do nothing. Two and a half months of living at home Caitlin now realizes that was a bad idea. Refer to paragraph one about not getting anything done... well, that's not entirely true. It has been nice to have the time to catch up with old friends, explore Atlanta, stay up late and sleep all day. But in between those days of activity, there are quite a few that start off like so:
9:00 - wake up to sun streaming through the windows - "nope, I have nothing to get out of bed for" - turn on episode of Scrubs, go back to sleep.
11:00 - "hungry, but if I go downstairs then I'll have to figure out how to pass the rest of the day. guess I won't"
Right now my summer accomplishments include: all nine seasons of Scrubs, twice (to be fair, I fall asleep to a lot of them which means that I only hear the first 10 minutes or so...); four seasons of Parks and Recreation, a decent amount of How I Met Your Mother, and the first four episodes of Game of Thrones. But so that you don't think I'm a completely mush-brained piece of scum, I've also read the first three Game of Thrones books, two John Green novels, part of Blue Like Jazz, and right now I'm working on The Hound of Baskerville (which is a really good read for anyone who is looking for a mystery).
Needless to say, unemployment got old, fast. And, as I'm sure you can guess, during my job-searching phase I was a complete delight to myself and my family and not at all a dejected, stress-ball, monster human.
Until...

4. I'm moving!
At the end of August I'll be cramming everything I own into a 50 lb suitcase and heading south of the border. After endless hours combing through the "want" ads and a skype interview that cut out every couple minutes, I accepted a middle and high school English teacher position at the Christian American School of Guatemala. Which means, LET THE ADVENTURES BEGIN....AGAIN.

I think you're all caught up. I'll try to keep the preparations for my ten month (maybe longer, we'll see how it goes. but that's the length of my contract for now) stint in Central America. And will make an effort to document the ridiculous, wonderful, mess that will be my first year of teaching.
In the meantime, next week I'm headed out on a grand tour of the USA (well, the southern parts) which is promising some excellent mishaps and misadventures.

Thanks for keepin' up with me!
C.

another successful interaction with the opposite sex

“I write this post crammed in a bus with an alarming number of people” was how this post was supposed to start off. I was going to paint you the most splendid of portraits of the hot, crowded, slightly smelly night megabus from London to Edinburgh. And then my seat mate started talking. At first I didn't mind, nothing wrong with a bit of conversation since we were going to spend 9ish hours next to each other. But you know the sensation of when a conversation is careening toward a steep, steep cliff? And you reach out to try and pull it back and just watch it slip past your outstretched finger tips, down into the dark, murky, and uncomfortable abyss? That pretty much sums up my bus buddy experience.

Things started off well enough, chatting with this man who was old enough to be my father - "where ya from? where ya going?" type deal. And then with an astonishing demonstration of how many wrong turns don't make a right I found myself flabbergasted on the receiving end of an invitation to be his date to a wedding in Spain that summer. This was before I had even told him my name. I had just listened to the lengthy list of “awesome” stag (bachelor) parties he had been to in Amsterdam – side effect of having been in The Netherlands and the conversation had trickled into weddings. I shouldn’t have even brought it up in the first place, but I was so very desperate to stop hearing about his wild times in Amsterdam, I made a joke about how everyone and their brother at home was getting married. Before I knew it he was telling me about the empty plus one that he had for this Spanish wedding and looking at me with expectant eyes.

At first I just laughed, thinking that there was no possible way he could be serious, and then realized that this man was indeed, desperate enough to invite a complete stranger to be his date to this event. I could practically see Liz Lemon walking through announcing: "shut it down".

I used every line in the book to deflect that one - some true, some un, whatever would get me out of that mess. Then I tried to steer the conversation away from all things marriage, prattling on about something like The Netherlands and teaching and whatnot, but as soon as I paused my filibuster to catch my breath, he switched us back to stag parties and all the good ones he barely remembers. Mercy. There was finally a long enough pause in conversation that I was able to shut my eyes and pretend to be asleep. Unfortunately, with my backpack jammed down at my feet, there wasn’t much room to comfortably “be asleep”. I shifted back and forth, trying to find a suitable position. Unable to situate myself, I opened my eyes to fold my coat into a good shape and found my seat buddy staring at me with earnest eyes, offering me a blow-up camping pillow. Still a little perturbed by our earlier interaction, I very politely refused, telling him that I couldn’t possibly take his pillow. And that is when he looked me square in the eye and said, “but I blew it up for you”

…

Nope, nope, nope. Nopenopenopenope. 

Again, I refused and went back to “sleeping” for the rest of our journey. I’m sure he was just trying to be kind, but a girl’s gotta look out for herself, especially when traveling alone. But oh, how talking to strangers can be fun. 

the post-internship adventure begins

I had a little less than 24 hours in London. Stepping off the plane, I found my giant suitcase and checked it for the remainder of the week then armed with just my backpack, took the long elevator ride down to catch the Piccadilly line. I watched crowded houses and compact gardens fade into the dark tunnels of the Underground. With a stupid grin, I disembarked at Gloucester Road and stepped off onto the flurry of people. Finally, something I recognized.

Two years ago I spent six weeks studying abroad in at Richmond University’s Kensington campus so knowing that I’d be on my own for the evening, I naturally selected a hostel in that area. It didn’t take long to find my hostel – an old brownstone around the block from where I lived during my study abroad. After dropping my bags, I retraced my steps from two years previous. It was a hollow happiness to be there without my study abroad friends, unreal to be walking along Queens Gate Terrace without a gaggle of girls laughing and chattering about our next big adventure. I made an early night, exhausted from the previous days and eager to start the following day. A friend of mine from Auburn happened to be studying abroad in London during this semester so when I awoke the next morning, I met her at the Tube station. We headed to Le Pain for breakfast – oh how I missed those scones – and then wandered into the Victoria and Albert. During my summer study abroad, I may have pushed myself a bit too hard. Trying to cram all of London (and Ireland) into six weeks took a pretty big toll on my immune system and England, in her fickle way, kicked me to the curb exhausted and sick with bronchitis. My point in this is, the last time I tried to visit the V & A, I made it about ten feet in the door before my little lungs started acting up. Trying to be subtle, I tried looking at the exhibits with my mouth pressed against the crook of my arm as my lungs seized and attempted to make a bid for freedom through the nearest orifice. By the third room I could feel people’s eyes on the back of my neck surely wondering, “dear goodness, this girl must have the plague”. Naturally, I took my leave before long. Back to the present, the V & A was at the top of my “things that I didn’t get to do list” – Rachel and I wandered for hours without anyone thinking I was a plague victim. Success.

Later we wove our way over to Portabello Market and on to Holland Park, grabbed a beer at her local pub, and after a couple hours of down time, returned there later for dinner. We said goodbye after dinner and I took to the Tube once more, headed to Victoria Bus Station.

Of all my misadventures with the opposite sex (and anyone who knows me well enough will know that I have quite a cache of stories) my midnight bus trip to Scotland might hit the top five on the Most Uncomfortable list. But that’s a story for another time. Stay tuned!