Guate2027 Checklist!

 

Everything is coming together!

1. Accommodation booked: through AirBnb, nice I bedroom flat just outside the city centre and closer to where I will be volunteering in Ciudad Vieja

2. Flights booked:  (via Amsterdam and Mexico City) AVOIDING USA flying with KLM and Aeromexico 

3. Language tuition booked:    With a prestigious school where I will do 2 weeks of Spanish 7 hours a day 5 days a week, with a focus on conversational skills, and, 1 week intensive Kaqchikel (that will be a real adventure) as the structure of the language bears no resemblance to anything I have studied before.

4. Spanish revision in progress  ably (?) assisted by Chat GPT.

5. Started my fund raising to get the £500 contribution I am expected to make to Niños de Guatemala.  I know my friends will be generous!

6. Reconnecting with old friends from Antigua (remember I was living there for a year in 2011-2012 and have kept in touch with one or two people there.

Welcome back, or maybe just Welcome!

 

So after a very long gap, I am resurrecting the blog as I start on my preparations for Gaute 2027!   I am so excited.   I hope if you are reading this, you are doing so as a result of my "begging" letter in support of my three month trip to La Antigua, Guatemala, and volunteering for Niños de Guatemala.  I want you to feel part of the experience, (especially if you are a donor, to my £500 target linked to this trip. If that is you, then thank you and welcome. 

To recap the story so far. I wanted a project to adequately reflect my arrival at 70 years of age!  And in a "Eureka" moment I remembered the great time I had in 2011-2012 volunteering in La Antigua, Guatemala with and NGO called CasaSito. Having now added a further 6 years of voluntary experience from my time in Peru, the need was to do something significant.

So I decided on a 90day trip back to Guatemala. I did my research and decided that the work of Niños de Guatemala fitted the bill. Mainly because of their high school and scholarship programme focusing on youngsters from 15 - 17 transitioning from school to the world of work.  La Antigua, is a major tourist spot and also home to many retired Americans. The entire city centre is a UNESCO world heritage site and tourism and hospitality is the name of the game!

However, imagine you are a young person from an Indigenous background, so your first language is probably Kaqchikal (A Mayan derivative language), you come from an extremely poor background, you have to learn Spanish as your second language (but the first language of non indigenous, paler, descendants of the conquistadors) and your city, thrives on the ability to speak English because it is a touristic centre. Quite a challenge!   You were lucky enough to be educated and fed, at one of Niños de Guatemala's three schools based outside of the city centre. ANd know you are going to jump into the hustle and bustle of life in the city, or maybe you want to start a very small business. Where to start!

Niños de Guatemala relies on the support of up to 200 volunteers a year to help them achieve their aims and objectives. Most volunteer stay for one or two weeks and combine a few hours a day volunteering in the morning with being a tourist in the afternoon.  I am offering eight weeks, mornings, afternoons and weekends, to work with the high school youngsters and scholarship students on the hospitality programme to get them job fit. Improve their language, communication and personal development abilities and to also build their self-confidence as personal esteem.

In order to do this I have already started to revise my rusty Spanish, and with the help of AI (artificial Intelligence) am starting to make real progress which will be backup by two weeks of intensive/immersion conversational Sanish when I arrive in Guatemala. And then a further intensive week of Kaqchikal language tuition so that I can communicate with  indigenous students and also in the wider community, respectfully in their own language. It will only be a few words and phrases, but I hop ein so doing, I also learn about the cultural,language and other difference that need to be overcome, to work in La Antigua in 2027!

So please follow my journey, ask me questions and let's be a part of this great adventure together.

Please look back at my posts from 2011 and 2012 to see many of the wonders of this fabulous orginal capital of Guatemala, and my volunteering back them.

Thank you.

WIll start work shortly on filling in the gap of the last 3 years. Never happened! But for Guate 2027 I am already up and running!

 I stopped my blog in 2019 but have decided that now I have more time, I shall fill in the gaps and start blogging again, once I am in my new flat in Hereford.  One of many planned retirement pastimes. 

Here is an external picture of my new flat which is currently undergoing refurbishment (new wet room) and complete redecoration. Hopefully I shall move in week beginning September 12 (fingers crossed).

Life goes on.

The long gap between posts is just that, life goes on and the new different and exciting is not a feature of the everyday. I have been battling with mice and slugs eating my seedlings but have at last got some plants to plant.

Today I have been on this adventure in France technically 1 year. It has had it ups and downs and after my last break I return with my “eyes wide open” and a clearer understanding of the challenges and the expectations of all concerned.

But, last week I was in the UK, having an MOT: Doctor, Dentist and Optician. I don't have Lymes disease (but do have a lot of muscle aches and similar symptoms – just wear and tear), I do have gum disease (now under control with a multitude of interdental brushes) and my eyes are fine but have the very first signs of cateracts (they will take years to develop).

Need to not work quite so hard at the tough stuff; less tree felling and maybe more work cooking and gardening!

But then the main reason for the return was a trip to Istanbul with Andy. Much needed and hugely enjoyable. Andy had found a small hotel within spitting distance of the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque and yet was completely quiet. We arrived on the first day of a three day Eid holiday, so along with tourists we had to contend with everybody out and about. We soon realised that we need to be up and out early and to take it easier in the mid-day and afternoon heat. But had a great time. As you can see.

Terrific food, terrific weather ( a bit too hot?) and lovely people.

Highlights, Haya Sofia and the Dolmahace Palace (absolutely amazing especially the 4.5 ton chandelier manufactured in Birmingham) . Trip on the Bosphorus strait local boat for 2 Euros for 90 minutes as opposed to tourist boat same route 30 Euros.

The Blue mosque resembled was overcrowded and under renovation (actually EVERYWHERE we visited was under renovation!)

Also visited the amazing underground water cistern, the Ecumenical Patriarchate Cathedral of St George, the Topkapi Palace (not impressed) and local bazaar.

Great transport system, especially as the tram stopped 20 metres from the hotel. Would like to go back off season. Amazingly both Andy and I returned to the UK with about 40% of our spending money as everything was so reasonable.

Turkish food and wine is really really good, varied and full of taste and again so reasonable.

Here is a selection of photos.

view from hotel rooftop bar

The Birmingham Manufactured 4.5 ton chandelier! This is one of the most amazing rooms I have ever seen.

Into the light of rediscovery ..... January 1. 2019.

Start of year …… Now that I “listen to” rather than “do” music, I am, as I have previously mentioned, on a voyage of discovery of music that is new to me. I am catching up on composers that I wanted to know more about and just haven't had the time to listen to and explore. With cutbacks in arts funding, orchestras play it safe and so play music that they know will fill the hall rather than music that needs to be heard. As a result we are knee deep in the “greats” and composers who have/had important things to say are left in the dark. We all lose out. 

Thankfully the internet has given access to music and scores so that rediscovery of forgotten masterpieces is available to all. But, as the saying goes, “you don't know what you don't know” so we might not know that the symphonies of composer x and the equal (and sometimes better) than contemporaneous composer y, but y had a better or more famous patron, or access to funding, or was in the UK and not trying to make a living in a developing country.

Anyway, this is a long winded way of saying that, as in life, sometimes the unexpected, the road less travelled or the riskier option can provide amazing riches and insights. Curiosity seems to be less in fashion, but for me, having time to listen means having time to be curious. Because of my musical training I can listen to a Beethoven Symphony whenever I want, because it is in my music memory and I just have to recall it and listen to it in my head, it is there if I need it. But how much nicer to discover something new and challenging and different. A new voice, a rediscovered but neglected masterpiece. And without the necessity of having to follow critical views past and present. One damning review and an amazing work of art, or book, or piece of music is cast into outer darkness sometime hardly ever to see the light of day again.

So I am looking forward to bringing works back into my own personal light by exploring the byways rather than the highways. Such a revelation.

On Sunday I heard a snippet of a piece of music and yesterday I tracked it down via you tube for the music and another site (IMSLP) for the orchestral score and today I have listened to a symphony which probably NEVER gets an outing in the concert hall, but is astounding music. Sir Arnold Bax: Third Symphony. And tomorrow I will probably find another and another and another ……. so much better than hearing yet another tired performance of Beethoven 5!

I know that this is just a metaphor for life, and a metaphor for my 2019. Yours too? Rediscover those discarded hobbies, interests and gifts. Search out the less familiar, take a few risks and who knows what riches are there to be discovered afresh .

What unexpected delights await you?

Happy New Year.