Cobán

    This last week I took my mandatory trip out of Guatemala to renew my visa.  Although I had not quite reached the 90 day maximum stay limit, I decided that doing nothing on Thanksgiving at a monastery in Esquipulas was not the ideal way to spend it, A beach in Belize sounded much better.  And it was.  The trip started with a bus ride to El Rancho, a town name that I still cannot say correctly.  Try it.  Remember though, you have to roll the R in Rancho and say it in a conversation.  Tough, huh?  I somehow managed to convince the bus attendant to remind me when we got there (by asking him at every town if we were at El Rancho) and de-boarded with high hopes, even though my directions were "wait at the corner and find a bus going to Cobán."  Easier said than done.  El Rancho, it turns out, is literally just a bunch of restaurants (but no bathrooms) at the intersection of two highways.  Two highways which, apparently, rarely see the passing of buses to Cobán.  Although I had been specifically told to take a bus and had been warned not to take the microbuses, after 45 minutes of waving off microbus drivers and waiting for a real bus, I decided to cut my losses and just get to Cobán.  I flagged down the first nearly empty microbus I saw, thinking that I'd have ample room for the 3 hour drive,  and was on my way.  Or so I thought.  We spent the next half hour driving around El Rancho until the bus, with seats for 13, was filled to capacity.  Oh well, I thought, at least now we won't have to stop to let more people on.  Wrong again.  Guatemala, it turns out, has no laws against packing as many people into a van as possible.  After many stops, a few too many people in the van, and a little back pain because of the fact that the seats didn't have enough room between them for me to put my legs out straight, I made it to Cobán.  A little worse for the wear, but still in one piece.

Come to think of it, maybe I should've figured the whole microbus thing out when I got here...

It is amazing that in a country that is less than half the size of Minnesota two places can differ so much, but Cobán and Esquipulas are completely different cities.  The first thing I did in Cobán was eat at McDonald's (because I liked the irony more than the food, the last time I ate McDonald's was in Switzerland, and before that, Chile) and walk around a mall.  Two things that definitely do not exist in Esquipulas.  It turns out that Cobán is about twice the size of Esquipulas, while my monastery is about twice the size of theirs.  That being said, besides the area around the mall, Cobán feels much smaller than Esquipulas.  While I was there the stores were mostly closed, nothing happened at night, and people really kept to themselves.  The lives of the volunteers up there is quite a bit different from mine as well.  I'm here alone, which really forces me to branch out and hang out with the monks or spend time alone in my room.  There are two volunteers in Cobán and they share a room, making their experience more communal in a way.  However, they have their own gringo hang out room with one of the monks from North Dakota where pass most of their time.  They even stream a MN news station every weekend to watch all of the football games!

 

This is a picture of us agonizing over the Vikings getting slaughtered by Green Bay.  Gabe, on the left, is from Wisconsin.  

It was good to see the differences between my life in Esquipulas and theirs in Cobán.  I realized some things that I have here that I'm happy about and some things that they have that I like.  I have more freedom here to choose my work, almost complete freedom actually, while they are basically stuck doing what Brother Bernie tells them to do.  It seems like this has made them a little unhappy with their work, and has made me realize that if I am unsatisfied with what I am doing, it's only my fault.  I've also realized that I am doing good work, and has given me more energy to go about that work.  They have more comforts such as tv, gringo friends, youtube, but I think if I had all those things it would take away from the real immersion that I have experienced here which has allowed me to make great friends and has sped up my ability to learn spanish.  They also have access to cars, which would be really nice, but would decrease the cool things I have seen walking down the streets of Esquipulas.  

Like this.

 

While I had a relaxing and informative trip to Cobán, a retreat for all Benedictine monks in Guatemala began on Monday, and it was politely suggested that we make ourselves invisible.  So we did the next best thing, we left for the beaches of Belize.