We have been living in Guatemala full time now for a little over a year. Time has gone quickly and slowly. Quickly in that I have good friends, the climate, the all around quirkiness of this place which keeps me constantly amused or shaking my head. Slowly when the basics like electricity and water are elusive, or when the river threatens to wash the house into the lake without an arc.
The time we spend living in this offbeat pueblo in the highlands of Guatemala continues to stretch me. Just living here has reshaped my understanding of happiness, suffering, faith, community, poverty, friendship, and fast food. Living here has initiated more questions than answers. Maybe I was going through life too comfortable, too complacent, too braindead.
Whereas one year of my life in Canada could often closely resemble the year before or after, with only the extracurriculars of the girls changing, a year here is distinctive and impossible to replicate. My abilities are stretched here, I’m constantly challenged, nothing is static. Living here has put me more in line with living with no regrets, and daily it pinches me out of complacency.
This year was marked by the first of our litter graduating and happily trotting off into the world, not for the first time, mind you. But this time it was a bit more poignant as it feels like she is leaving for good, with only the future promises of skype dates and short visits home. Meanwhile our second started high school. I’m more conscious, this time around, how quickly the high school years pass. The youngest does her last age in single digits. Raising children is truly a fleeting experience. If I remembered this simple fact every second I was with them, I wonder how my parenting would change.
You can’t go for many days without someone asking the question, “So, how did you come to live here.” Answer, “We wanted to give our girls a different cultural experience, and they kept dragging us back.” Giving the girls an unconventional experience has its pros and cons. We have only a few extracurricular choices here. Dont know if that goes under the pro or con column. It makes for calmer, family-based evenings–I’m not living in my car, feeding the kids in drive-thrus.
Perhaps the best way for me to see the benefits of this experience is to look at our oldest. She spent a total of two years here. When she graduated she went to Madrid for her gap year. Unbeknownst to me at the time, she fell in love with Pana when we first lived here when she was 12. She wanted desperately to come back and do some high school here. We, her parents, said, “that’s nice, hun,” and patiently waited for the feeling to go away. It only intensified. She ended up doing half of her junior year and her senior year here. Don’t know why her interest in international living surprised us. Afterall, we planted the seed when she was little, so why were we so surprised when it grew into a tree.
For her the benefits of this experience have made her fluent in Spanish, increased her independence, her global connectedness, her compassion, her flexibility, her confidence, her self-reliance, her competency in making things happen in her life, her ability to empathize, her ability to cope with adversity, her ability to deal with drunk guys hitting on her (tis a useful lifeskill, afterall). In Madrid she is easily self-sufficient, teaching English at a school, living with Spanish speaking roomates from Peru, maxing out her gap year before college. I’ve been impressed with how capable she is, how wise she is for her age, her compassionate heart. I can see firsthand the benefits of her time living here, how this experience has changed her.
Madi has started high school here and loves her school. She has stretched up and my friends often comment in the street that she is now taller than I am. She is still a grounded old soul. Most recently she has become a foster doggie mom for street rescue dogs. To date she has fostered four puppies and two dogs, while others find homes for them. She is going to learn how to innoculate dogs and will assist the vets in the clinics when they fix the street dogs.
Our youngest flourishes wherever her feet land. We are trying to maintain her fluency in both French and Spanish. So far we’ve managed to do that with a bit of juggling. But wherever she is, she is like a little friend magnet. Groups of friends wait for her in two countries, as she bounces back and forth. Each time she returns, she is a bit of a novelty. She is as flexible as a kid could be, and adjusts to new situations effortlessly.
I’m never healthier than when I’m living here. I walk, a lot. We eat lots of fresh veggies and fruit all year round. Any food we eat is prepared from scratch, much to my dismay. No drive-thrus, no timmies iced caps, no Big Mac combos, no prepared lasagnas or PC green curry noodly dishes, no Cheesecake Factory. If you want to create savory nasty goodness, you have to make it yourself. Too much work for me. So we eat simply, we exercise out of necessity, we wear sunscreen. Down here you live healthily by default rather than discipline. Makes it a no-brainer.
For me I’ve enjoyed the variety of living here. I’ve taken some spanish lessons (need more), done lots of volunteering, helped build some houses, done some medical clinics, joined a choir, sing with a rockband, joined the gym, quit the gym, thought of joining the gym again but just wait until the feeling passes, taken a bunch of different classes, done some travelling, had countless fun times laughing with my girlfriends til we pee. But most importantly I’ve taken control of my pace of living, slowed it down so I can focus more on the important things, actually spending time as a family in the evenings, made time for personal reflection, reading, writing, just enjoying life.
Perhaps the most significant thing I’ve started to learn this past year, is how to be more intentional with my time. I’ve stopped being swept away like a twig in the torrent, all of a sudden one year gone, five years gone, ten years gone, flicker, flicker, flicker. I want to feel each day consciously as it’s happening, good or messy, especially maxing out the moments with my girls while they are still in our house. I want to care for my friends in a way that empowers and encourages them, I want to help strangers as if they were my friends, I want to continue to live as if life is pinching me hard each day.