Antigua, Day 1

 Our first full day in Antigua was spent just trying to figure things out.  We started out by going to breakfast, since we had no food whatsoever.  We ended up seeing a Dunkin Donuts first, and we were hungry enough that it sounded perfect.  My kids weren't quite ready for a breakfast of frijoles and tortillas.

The city is filled with beautiful churches.  This is one we passed along the way.

Grocery shopping was kind of a fiasco as went around trying to find things that looked familiar.  I don't even like to grocery shop with my kids at home, so when you're crammed into a little grocery store with tight aisles and a lot of things you can't exactly identify, it makes it even more crazy. We found the kind of bread that they love as well as some cereal and other staples, and put it into the plastic bags we had to buy and headed back to the house.  Along the way we passed by the Santa Catalina arch, with is the pretty yellow arch seen in almost every picture of Antigua.

The view from out our front door:

Our front door.

Chloe's friend, Ignacio, who lives at the house with us.  He loves Angry Birds and Plants vs Zombies.  He's hysterical.

Katie and Mason went with me to check out Spanish schools, and we found one we really liked that they will start tomorrow.

We are still trying to get our bearings and all of the kids are adjusting in their own (sometimes emotional) way.  It will be better to have more to do, so hopefully Spanish school goes well tomorrow.

The Only Way Out Is Through

I used that phrase a lot the last time we did something like this.  There are so many details to put together that by the end you just want all of the preparation and planning to be OVER.  And it's hard to believe it's all going to work out. But quitting isn't an option (well, it is, but it's a pretty lame option), so the only choice is to keep pushing through until there's no time left and you just have to DO it.  Buckle in, since the point of no return has long since been passed.

We were able to use frequent flier miles to get the tickets, but we couldn't get them all together.  I flew down on a 6:00 am flight with my 3 younger kids and Ryan flew down at 2:00 pm with Mason.

To catch a 6 am flight, you have to wake up at somewhere-in-the-middle-of-the-night o'clock to get there on time, so don't plan on sleeping.  I laid in my bed for about 4 hours, and then at 3:30 am, it was time to get up and get going.

Ryan drove us to the airport, and we got everything checked in and headed through security.  Chloe and I made it through just fine, Katie had to dump a bottle of leave-in conditioner and a thing of sunscreen, and Andrew's backpack got flagged as well.  I couldn't figure out what he had that would have triggered the sensors, and then saw that as his one toy/game he could bring, he chose a big metal box of dominoes, that weighed probably 5 pounds.  I questioned his choice until he and Chloe spent an hour in each airport we went to setting up domino tracks to knock over.

I was pretty much catatonic for most of the flight to Miami, and my kids were kind enough to leave me alone while I sat there in that not-asleep-but-not-awake state that is the best that can be done when you're flying coach.  Which is every plane trip ever for me.  I could tell I was doing that open-mouth gaping kind of thing while I "slept" and I didn't even care.

We had a layover in Miami followed by an hour sitting on the tarmac waiting for Cuban airspace to clear.  Aren't we over this yet, Cuba?  But Andrew got to sit in the cockpit and we flew over some amazing islands that made me second guess my choice to go somewhere in the mountains.

We landed in the middle of a downpour, and got our ride to Antigua.  It was slow going with the traffic, and it was dark and gray outside because of the rain.  And we were tired.  And I was a little stressed.

We got to the house, and met the family that lives here and takes care of the house.  We did a quick tour of the house, and I came to find out that none of the rooms are actually connected to each other.  Every room empties out onto a courtyard in the middle that is kind of like an outdoor living room. So nary a hallway to be found.  Ryan and I have a bathroom that attaches, but my kids have to leave their rooms and basically go outside to get to their bathrooms.  The whole thing kind of threw me off.  Once it gets dark at 6:00 pm, it kind of feels like you're camping, since there isn't a lot of light in the rooms, and you spend a lot of time outside going from room to room.  Who doesn't love a 2-month camping trip? I'll post photos of the house later.

It was a rough first night as we waited in the dark for Ryan and Mason to arrive.  The house stressed me out, I was tired, my kids were sad that we were going to be gone for so long, and the rain wouldn't stop.  I knew intellectually that things would be hard at the beginning, but it's difficult to really prepare yourself for the mental challenge of losing the world you're used to and starting a new life somewhere so different.  And being the mom, I get to absorb all emotions that gush out of my children and hold onto them. Lucky me!

I felt that as we prayed about and prepared for this trip that it was the right thing to do, and I felt very sure about the house we rented. So that was going to have to carry me over until life settled into something that felt a little less overwhelming.


A few photos from the trip down:

 The view over the Caribbean

 First stop after landing was the bathroom.  Each stall we went into greeted us with this:

After we left, we realized we were supposed to have grabbed some toilet paper as we walked in.  Obviously.

Just waiting for our ride in the rain.  Katie's shirt says "Say Yes to New Adventures".  Very appropriate.

Seeing the Walmart sign in Guatemala City made me a little homesick for Crestwood.  I never knew how much I could love a Walmart until the best Walmart in the country moved in right down the street.

It was a downpour our whole trip from the Guatemala City airport to Antigua (about 30 miles away, but 1 1/2 hours with traffic and rain).  This is a view of our street.  Turns out it becomes a river when it rains a lot. Anyone got a canoe?

We were starving by the time we got to Antigua, so we went out with our umbrellas in search of food.   We could have been adventurous, but when you're tired and have three tired kids, something familiar and fast is the way to go.  Wendy's hit the spot.  They said "con mucho gusto" ("our pleasure") after everything I asked for and carried our trays to the table for us.

This is the wall across from our house with beautiful bougainvillea  trailing over the top.

So, landing day wasn't our best, but we had hope for the future.

"You're going to Guatemala?"

"Guatemala? Why are you going to Guatemala?"

That is a really good question.  My almost 8-year old has asked that multiple times.  I think she's hoping that if I explain it to her one more time, it will actually make sense to her why we are taking her away from her best friends and her house and everything she knows.  

She has also  had a hard time explaining to her teachers that we aren't going on a mission trip.  Isn't that what people do in a country like Guatemala? Honestly, a mission trip would have been easier to explain and way more noble. But this trip really isn't about that.  

I think the best way to describe it would be a  2 1/2-month "family study abroad." 

About a year ago, we started cooking up plans to get a few months of time cleared where Ryan wouldn't have any teaching going on.  For a lot of professors, that would be summer, but Ryan teaches in the summer.  So the best option was the fall,  even though that would mean pulling the kids out of school.   And homeschooling.  For some people that would be the highlight of the adventure, but I am exceptionally supportive of public education and am generally content to defer the majority of that work to professionals. But in the pursuit of adventure, sacrifices have to be made.

We started looking for a place to go, initially focusing on finding somewhere Ryan could do a visiting position at a university like he did a few years ago when we went to Switzerland.  We chose a few countries that we thought would be good and went to work on seeing which would be best.  

We didn't get very far. For one reason or another, nothing would fall into place.  No doors opened, and no pathways revealed themselves.  

Our primary goal was to find a place where our kids could become as immersed as possible in a culture and community that wasn't their own.  I cared a lot about the weather, since the idea of being caged up in a little apartment, homeschooling in a foreign country where it's too cold or rainy to go outside, was not at all what I was hoping for.  It needed to be affordable, because when the cost of each activity is multiplied by 6, it can add up way too quickly. Also, we knew we wanted to pick one place that we would stay in for the entire time, with only short day trips or the occasional overnighter.  

In contrast to the idea of staying put, we moved about constantly when we did our trip to Europe four years ago, putting over 7500 miles on our van over the course of the two months.  It was amazing. And exhausting. And Ryan made it really clear that if we ever travelled again with our kids it would NOT be like that.

In the course of trying to decide where to go, we had a conversation with some friends from church.  The husband is from Guatemala and the wife is from the U.S.  They had taken their kids to Guatemala for a month and had great things to say about it.  And with that, the fire was lit.

Almost twenty years ago, just a few months after finishing my mission to Chile, I traveled to Guatemala with the BYU nursing program.  I lived in the city of Antigua for 6 weeks, and I fell in love with it.  We worked in clinics and the hospital during the week and then went on amazing adventures during the weekend.  Every day we would go to "Spanish school" for 2 hours, where we would basically get one-on-one tutoring from a local teacher.

When I thought through what it would be like to go as a family there, it all started to come together. I began looking at housing options, and imagined what it would be like to live there.  The weather? Highs are in the 70's, lows are in the 50's.  All year long. They call it the "land of eternal spring."  It's safe, inexpensive, and oozes historical charm.  It's surrounded by mostly-dormant volcanoes. The city is small enough that we can walk anywhere we need to go.  For longer distances, hiring people to drive you is very affordable.  There is a good sized church community to be part of,  and the chapel is just a few blocks from the house we eventually decided to rent. There are great opportunities to do service and to participate in the community. And every day, my kids can go to Spanish school and meet one-on-one with a teacher like I did twenty years ago.  Just like that, the search was over.

We found a house to rent and cashed out frequent flyer miles to book the plane tickets. Then, after those parts were decided, I stopped making plans.  I've done plenty of research to make sure we are  as prepared for the trip as we can be, but not much more beyond that.   It is all just an adventure waiting to be created and lived.  There are definitely benefits the the well-scheduled trip, but I am embracing the unknown of this one.

I was listening to Pride and Prejudice as I was packing for this trip.  There's a part where Elizabeth is talking to her aunt about the prospect of traveling together in the upcoming summer.  She says:

"And when we do return, it shall not be like other travellers, without being able to give one accurate idea of any thing. We will know where we have gone -- we will recollect what we have seen. Lakes, mountains, and rivers shall not be jumbled together in our imaginations; nor, when we attempt to describe any particular scene, will we begin quarrelling about its relative situation. Let our first effusions be less insupportable than those of the generality of travelers."

I blogged on our last trip and made a photo book out of it using all of the blog entries.  Without that, I'm afraid the lakes, mountains, and rivers would most definitely have become jumbled together. So in an attempt to ensure that we know with a certainty "where we have gone", I'll be posting here pretty regularly and sharing the ups and downs of  what we encounter as we live for the next two and a half months in Antigua.

"You're going to Guatemala?"

"Guatemala? Why are you going to Guatemala?"

That is a really good question.  My almost 8-year old has asked that multiple times.  I think she's hoping that if I explain it to her one more time, it will actually make sense to her why we are taking her away from her best friends and her house and everything she knows.  

She has also  had a hard time explaining to her teachers that we aren't going on a mission trip.  Isn't that what people do in a country like Guatemala? Honestly, a mission trip would have been easier to explain and way more noble. But this trip really isn't about that.  

I think the best way to describe it would be a  2 1/2-month "family study abroad." 

About a year ago, we started cooking up plans to get a few months of time cleared where Ryan wouldn't have any teaching going on.  For a lot of professors, that would be summer, but Ryan teaches in the summer.  So the best option was the fall,  even though that would mean pulling the kids out of school.   And homeschooling.  For some people that would be the highlight of the adventure, but I am exceptionally supportive of public education and am generally content to defer the majority of that work to professionals. But in the pursuit of adventure, sacrifices have to be made.

We started looking for a place to go, initially focusing on finding somewhere Ryan could do a visiting position at a university like he did a few years ago when we went to Switzerland.  We chose a few countries that we thought would be good and went to work on seeing which would be best.  

We didn't get very far. For one reason or another, nothing would fall into place.  No doors opened, and no pathways revealed themselves.  

Our primary goal was to find a place where our kids could become as immersed as possible in a culture and community that wasn't their own.  I cared a lot about the weather, since the idea of being caged up in a little apartment, homeschooling in a foreign country where it's too cold or rainy to go outside, was not at all what I was hoping for.  It needed to be affordable, because when the cost of each activity is multiplied by 6, it can add up way too quickly. Also, we knew we wanted to pick one place that we would stay in for the entire time, with only short day trips or the occasional overnighter.  

In contrast to the idea of staying put, we moved about constantly when we did our trip to Europe four years ago, putting over 7500 miles on our van over the course of the two months.  It was amazing. And exhausting. And Ryan made it really clear that if we ever travelled again with our kids it would NOT be like that.

In the course of trying to decide where to go, we had a conversation with some friends from church.  The husband is from Guatemala and the wife is from the U.S.  They had taken their kids to Guatemala for a month and had great things to say about it.  And with that, the fire was lit.

Almost twenty years ago, just a few months after finishing my mission to Chile, I traveled to Guatemala with the BYU nursing program.  I lived in the city of Antigua for 6 weeks, and I fell in love with it.  We worked in clinics and the hospital during the week and then went on amazing adventures during the weekend.  Every day we would go to "Spanish school" for 2 hours, where we would basically get one-on-one tutoring from a local teacher.

When I thought through what it would be like to go as a family there, it all started to come together. I began looking at housing options, and imagined what it would be like to live there.  The weather? Highs are in the 70's, lows are in the 50's.  All year long. They call it the "land of eternal spring."  It's safe, inexpensive, and oozes historical charm.  It's surrounded by mostly-dormant volcanoes. The city is small enough that we can walk anywhere we need to go.  For longer distances, hiring people to drive you is very affordable.  There is a good sized church community to be part of,  and the chapel is just a few blocks from the house we eventually decided to rent. There are great opportunities to do service and to participate in the community. And every day, my kids can go to Spanish school and meet one-on-one with a teacher like I did twenty years ago.  Just like that, the search was over.

We found a house to rent and cashed out frequent flyer miles to book the plane tickets. Then, after those parts were decided, I stopped making plans.  I've done plenty of research to make sure we are  as prepared for the trip as we can be, but not much more beyond that.   It is all just an adventure waiting to be created and lived.  There are definitely benefits the the well-scheduled trip, but I am embracing the unknown of this one.

I was listening to Pride and Prejudice as I was packing for this trip.  There's a part where Elizabeth is talking to her aunt about the prospect of traveling together in the upcoming summer.  She says:

"And when we do return, it shall not be like other travellers, without being able to give one accurate idea of any thing. We will know where we have gone -- we will recollect what we have seen. Lakes, mountains, and rivers shall not be jumbled together in our imaginations; nor, when we attempt to describe any particular scene, will we begin quarrelling about its relative situation. Let our first effusions be less insupportable than those of the generality of travelers."

I blogged on our last trip and made a photo book out of it using all of the blog entries.  Without that, I'm afraid the lakes, mountains, and rivers would most definitely have become jumbled together. So in an attempt to ensure that we know with a certainty "where we have gone", I'll be posting here pretty regularly and sharing the ups and downs of  what we encounter as we live for the next two and a half months in Antigua.

"You're going to Guatemala?"

"Guatemala? Why are you going to Guatemala?"

That is a really good question.  My almost 8-year old has asked that multiple times.  I think she's hoping that if I explain it to her one more time, it will actually make sense to her why we are taking her away from her best friends and her house and everything she knows.  

She has also  had a hard time explaining to her teachers that we aren't going on a mission trip.  Isn't that what people do in a country like Guatemala? Honestly, a mission trip would have been easier to explain and way more noble. But this trip really isn't about that.  

I think the best way to describe it would be a  2 1/2-month "family study abroad." 

About a year ago, we started cooking up plans to get a few months of time cleared where Ryan wouldn't have any teaching going on.  For a lot of professors, that would be summer, but Ryan teaches in the summer.  So the best option was the fall,  even though that would mean pulling the kids out of school.   And homeschooling.  For some people that would be the highlight of the adventure, but I am exceptionally supportive of public education and am generally content to defer the majority of that work to professionals. But in the pursuit of adventure, sacrifices have to be made.

We started looking for a place to go, initially focusing on finding somewhere Ryan could do a visiting position at a university like he did a few years ago when we went to Switzerland.  We chose a few countries that we thought would be good and went to work on seeing which would be best.  

We didn't get very far. For one reason or another, nothing would fall into place.  No doors opened, and no pathways revealed themselves.  

Our primary goal was to find a place where our kids could become as immersed as possible in a culture and community that wasn't their own.  I cared a lot about the weather, since the idea of being caged up in a little apartment, homeschooling in a foreign country where it's too cold or rainy to go outside, was not at all what I was hoping for.  It needed to be affordable, because when the cost of each activity is multiplied by 6, it can add up way too quickly. Also, we knew we wanted to pick one place that we would stay in for the entire time, with only short day trips or the occasional overnighter.  

In contrast to the idea of staying put, we moved about constantly when we did our trip to Europe four years ago, putting over 7500 miles on our van over the course of the two months.  It was amazing. And exhausting. And Ryan made it really clear that if we ever travelled again with our kids it would NOT be like that.

In the course of trying to decide where to go, we had a conversation with some friends from church.  The husband is from Guatemala and the wife is from the U.S.  They had taken their kids to Guatemala for a month and had great things to say about it.  And with that, the fire was lit.

Almost twenty years ago, just a few months after finishing my mission to Chile, I traveled to Guatemala with the BYU nursing program.  I lived in the city of Antigua for 6 weeks, and I fell in love with it.  We worked in clinics and the hospital during the week and then went on amazing adventures during the weekend.  Every day we would go to "Spanish school" for 2 hours, where we would basically get one-on-one tutoring from a local teacher.

When I thought through what it would be like to go as a family there, it all started to come together. I began looking at housing options, and imagined what it would be like to live there.  The weather? Highs are in the 70's, lows are in the 50's.  All year long. They call it the "land of eternal spring."  It's safe, inexpensive, and oozes historical charm.  It's surrounded by mostly-dormant volcanoes. The city is small enough that we can walk anywhere we need to go.  For longer distances, hiring people to drive you is very affordable.  There is a good sized church community to be part of,  and the chapel is just a few blocks from the house we eventually decided to rent. There are great opportunities to do service and to participate in the community. And every day, my kids can go to Spanish school and meet one-on-one with a teacher like I did twenty years ago.  Just like that, the search was over.

We found a house to rent and cashed out frequent flyer miles to book the plane tickets. Then, after those parts were decided, I stopped making plans.  I've done plenty of research to make sure we are  as prepared for the trip as we can be, but not much more beyond that.   It is all just an adventure waiting to be created and lived.  There are definitely benefits the the well-scheduled trip, but I am embracing the unknown of this one.

I was listening to Pride and Prejudice as I was packing for this trip.  There's a part where Elizabeth is talking to her aunt about the prospect of traveling together in the upcoming summer.  She says:

"And when we do return, it shall not be like other travellers, without being able to give one accurate idea of any thing. We will know where we have gone -- we will recollect what we have seen. Lakes, mountains, and rivers shall not be jumbled together in our imaginations; nor, when we attempt to describe any particular scene, will we begin quarrelling about its relative situation. Let our first effusions be less insupportable than those of the generality of travelers."

I blogged on our last trip and made a photo book out of it using all of the blog entries.  Without that, I'm afraid the lakes, mountains, and rivers would most definitely have become jumbled together. So in an attempt to ensure that we know with a certainty "where we have gone", I'll be posting here pretty regularly and sharing the ups and downs of  what we encounter as we live for the next two and a half months in Antigua.