Waiting

I am at the airport, at my terminal, waiting to board the first stretch of my days journey. My flight has been slightly delayed; somethings are just not predictable.

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Project Casa Herrera: Stage Two

The whole time while I was contacting MassArt about helping me apply to the Casa Herrera program I was also in contact with the directors of the program itself. Because I had met Milady while in Guatemala, I was able to send her an e-mail and ask her who I would need to contact to discuss applying for the program. She introduced me to Laurie Young. I contacted Laurie via e-mail on the 16th of March and was given all the information I needed as a non-UT student about the program.
On the 23rd of March I got the application for the program from Laurie and I started working on getting the application done as quickly and thoroughly as I could because the due date for the application was on the 1st of April.

By March 25th I started contacting Jean Wallace, the Assistant Director of Academic Advising at MassArt. I was getting anxious about whether or not I would be able to take part in the Casa Herrera program with MassArt's support. Prof. Turner was extremely wonderful about supporting my decision to try to apply to the program and she contacted Jean on my behalf stressing the uniqueness of the program and its legitimacy. When I heard back from Jean there were several questions about why the program needed to happen in the Fall so I explained my situation with classes and my degrees.
Both Meghan and Jean suggested that I try taking a leave of absence from MassArt for the semester and take part in the program on my own. Though I think that this is a very reasonable course of action, as a full double major and a fifth year undergrad, it was essential for myself and my parents, who assist in paying for my college tuition and fees, that the classes I take in Guatemala would be accepted credits toward my MassArt degrees. By taking a leave of absence I would have to convince the school upon my return to allow the credits from the program go toward my degrees and I couldn't afford for the school to not accept them.
I stressed that I would like to meet with Jean and Meghan in person so that I could explain why I was being so persistent and express to them my earnest, a difficult feat in text. Jean was wonderful and, even though I had missed every single deadline for MassArt, she was willing to meet with me on the 30th of March.
Our meeting went really well, and I was able to explain my reasoning better while we were in person. I had also brought in as much information about the program as I had available. I was also able to introduce myself and express in person my excitement about this program and what it had to offer.

During our meeting, Jean and Meghan told me that they were willing to examine the program and take the steps to try and help me not only apply for the program but have MassArt's support as well. I was extremely excited that I was being given such a chance. This was not a guarantee that MassArt would approve of the program, but it was a start! To help with the process I did part of the research for Jean and Meghan.
As we started the process of approving the program Meghan contacted Laurie and asked them to extend the deadline again so that I could still try to get into the program.

Project Casa Herrera: Stage One

I feel that now with all the "How it Started"'s I am caught up enough to start writing about the actual process of getting involved in a study abroad program in Guatemala.
As I mentioned in the last "How it Started" post, while I was in Guatemala in March 2011 I got a tour of a building called Casa Herrera. During the tour my travel group was told about a brand new program University of Texas at Austin, the college Casa Herrera branches from, was planning to run in the Fall of 2011. The program offers four classes at the Casa Herrera building with faculty from UT Austin and tutoring in both Spanish and Mayan at a local language school called Proyecto Linguistico Francisco Marroquin (PLFM) based in Antigua. The part of the program that really intrigued me was that Prof. David Stuart, one of the top Mayanists in the world, would be teaching two of the classes.
While I was in Guatemala I spoke to Prof. Turner about what she thought of the program and the opportunity it offers for undergrads. She was also very excited about the program and she encouraged me to apply for the Fall.
We returned from Guatemala on the 14th of March, and by the 17th I started talking to my school, MassArt, about the process of applying to the Casa Herrera Program. The original deadline for UT Austin was March 1st, but they had extended the deadline til April 1st so I needed to get my application together as quickly as I could. When I did the travel course through MassArt I worked with Lisa Armstrong who works on all the travel courses. I went to Lisa to ask about a study abroad, but she didn't handle semesters abroad, so she sent me to Meghan Houghton, who was standing in for MassArt's Study Abroad Director Amy Holland for the Spring semester. I sent Meghan an e-mail asking to meet with her to talk about preparing me for the study abroad in the Fall.
I was distraught when I got a prompt reply letting me know that the process of applying for a study abroad was much more complicated than I originally thought. MassArt has a deadline for students applying for study abroad's in the Fall; all paperwork needs to be turned in by March 15th and Casa Herrera was not a program that was approved by MassArt. Since I had come back from Guatemala on the 14th, and I hadn't even known about the program until I was in Guatemala, I persisted with asking to meet with Meghan so I could convince her to help me get into the program with MassArt's support. Meghan was extremely nice in all of our e-mailing back and forth, and she really tried to convince me to try for a study abroad in the Spring of 2012, that way we could take the time to go through all the important paperwork and really figure out what I would like to get out of a semester abroad.
I, however, had my heart set on going to Casa Herrera and that program is not being offered in the Spring. I am also finishing my undergrad in the 2011/2012 school year and it is necessary for Art Education majors to do their student teaching in their final semester, so the Fall is really the only available time for me to go on a study abroad.
I will continue with this in Project Casa Herrera: Stage Two.

How it started: Part Eight

During the evening after our second day working on the mural at Santiago Zamora our group went to a building called Casa Herrera in Antigua. The building is the Guatemala branch of University of Texas at Austin. The building is used by students and faculty studying Mesoamerica as a home base while working in Guatemala. We got a tour of the facility from the director Milady, who also told us about their first undergrad program they were preparing for for the fall. She mentioned that UT at Austin had extended its deadline to apply to the program until April 1st. That evening I talked to Prof. Turner about whether or not I should try applying to the program. The more we talked about it the more interested in the program I became.

The next evening we met a different group from Antigua. We met two amazing young women from Antigua who have started a program called Ninos Artistas. the program brings contemporary artists together with young art students in Antigua to go projects and learn more about art.

Both Milady and the two woman from Ninos Artistas came to Santiago Zamora after we met them to help us paint the mural, so we got a lot of time to get to know each other.

After we completed the mural in Santiago Zamora our group spent two days around Lake Atitlan.

Lake Atitlan is a beautiful volcanic lake surrounded by three volcanoes. Our first night at the lake we did a home stay with native families. I roomed with one of my classmates, Erica. We stayed with a large family in a cute little place that had a beautiful view of the lake.

The home stay was a wonderful experience, as I mentioned in the earlier home stay post. Neither Erica nor I spoke Spanish, but we made do communicating mostly with our hands. The night we had dinner and tried on traditional clothing and in the morning we had a wonderful breakfast and took a lot of pictures with the family.

After the class met up the second day at Lake Atitlan, we got into the back of some pickup trucks and rode standing up along the winding roads leading around the lake to Panajachel, one of the main tourist cities around the lake. The truck ride was extremely exciting and everyone enjoyed it.

At Panajachel we dropped off our luggage at our hotel then we went on a boat ride on the lake. we went around to several of the small towns around the lake and had lunch at a hotel with a view. We also stopped at another woman's weaving cooperative and they showed us how they dye their threads. The lake was beautiful and we all took pictures during the trip. When we got back to Panajachel we all went shopping then that evening we had our final dinner in Guatemala. We stayed in our hotel that final night and go up really early the next morning to to drive to Guatemala City for our flight. At the airport we said goodbye to our fantastic tour guide and got on our flight home.

How it started: Part Seven

In part six I skipped over the evening after our first day at Santiago Zamora. That evening was the night of the fund raiser for Antigua's NGOs. That evening was a turning point not just for the group as a whole, but also for myself on a professional level; what I would get involved with in the future.
The party was a costume masquerade, and Prof. Turners daughter amazingly was able to pull a few strings and get our entire group into the event. Since I can not speak Spanish and I was going to be painting with a young native girl who didn't speak English, one of my classmates was asked to join our group as well, as a translator.
The evening was not my favorite of the trip. The situation was very stressful and frustrating not only for myself, but for the young girl I was working with. Communication was extremely difficult and it was compounded as the evening drew on. I was also very uncomfortable with the situation as a student of art education. The four children chosen to take part in the evening were being asked quite a lot; they had to work with an artist they had only met that evening to create an art piece in under 90mins, and that piece would then be auctioned off in a competition situation between the four groups. I, personally, would not participate in a similar event in the future.
At the end of the evening our painting did sell for the second highest bid, which was very exciting for our group who did the painting and for the class as a whole. Unfortunately more issues arose after the auction, and our group had to leave early to return to our hotel.
The entire evening was a learning experience. I learned about my limits as an art educator and what I would get involved with, and I learned about the limits of those around me and how to handle certain situations with groups and individuals who make minor and serious mistakes.

How it started: Part Six

After our group in Guatemala got back to Antigua from our stint to the Peten, we started the mural project in Santiago Zamora!

We had four days to paint two walls; one 30ft and one 50ft!
We worked with the town's artist Edgar Chipix; a fantastic artist who was a bit of an outcast from the town for wanting to be an artist rather than a farmer.
The 50ft wall was based off of my sketches for an overall design and showcased like a story line from a Maya codex. The right side of the wall depicts the ancient Maya with the temple in its glory and the Maya figures (designed in the style Edgar had developed in his artwork) are ancient royals and ball players. Behind the figures the sun is setting behind two of the volcanoes surrounding the bowl of Antigua. In the center of the mural grows a Ceiba tree from the earth band symbol and the cycles of the moon rest under the sky band symbol at the top of the branches. The nine roots of the tree represent the nine levels of the underworld and the thirteen branches represent the thirteen levels of the heavens. The Ceiba tree is sectioned up as a Maize plant, a Cacao plant, and a bean plant representing all the agriculture of the ancient Maya people. At the Ceiba's base grows coffee plants, representing the new agriculture of the Maya people. On the left side of the mural the children of the town play games, practice singing and the harp, and do all the activities offered at El Plan Infinito. The sun rises from behind the third volcano representing the new beginning for these modern Maya children.
On the 30ft wall, my classmate Chris designed a more graffiti style mural which incorporates a stylized Maya profile in gold spray paint, the traditional Huipil design, the pattern of the cobble stones throughout the town, and a graffiti stylization of the towns name. The two mural connect through the Huipil of a woman on the 50ft side who represents the Woman's Weaving Cooperative of Santiago Zamora, a group of weavers who raise money to educate the children of the town and to get medical care for all the people of the town. For the four days we spent in the town the women made us lunch and sold us some of their wares.
As our finishing touch to the mural all of the children, the women from the weaving cooperative, and all of us from MassArt put our hand prints under the name of the building.

How it started: Part Five

On March 3rd, 2011, 11 MassArt students, two faculty members and myself all boarded a plane and headed to Antigua, Guatemala!

We took one plane to Houston, TX, then transferred to a plane to Guatemala City. Our day was long and we were mostly sitting the whole time, so by the time we got to Guatemala City and got into our bus, everyone was exhausted; except me. I was so excited to be in Guatemala that I had my window open and was practically falling out of it while we were driving from Guatemala City to Antigua. At one turn I really did start to tumble out the window, but luckily I made it to Antigua in one piece.

Our main base was in Antigua at an absolutely lovely hotel called Casa en Familia. I roomed with a fellow art ed major and friend, Elissa. Our first full day in Antigua was spent at a coffee farm in a small town outside of Antigua. The farm land was built up on the side of one of the three volcanoes surrounding the bowl Antigua is in. The farmers in that area work with a group called As Green As It Gets, which helps farmers learn every stage of coffee farming and selling.

On the second day, we all got on to another plane and flew to Flores in the Peten. We went for a tour of Flores and then drove to Tikal.

At Tikal we went to several of the temples, including Temple 4, the tallest of the temples in Tikal. Everyone also got to see me at my worst; I am very afraid of heights, but I still climbed all of the temples and spent time on the tops of all of them. I also went to the Tikal museum with Prof. Turner. That was an absolute treat for me, because I was finally able to see, in person, several of the pieces I had studied.

Tikal was wonderful, though Yaxha, the next point on our trip, was even better. We drove to Yaxha from Tikal, and it was on that drive that I realized what it was about Guatemala that really called to me; I felt like I was home. I was leaning out the window of the bus again, looking at the scenery in the country side, smelling the air, and watching the houses go by, I felt a comfort I had only ever felt at my Grandparents farm. I remember I turned to Prof. Turner and said that I couldn't believe it, but I felt like I would turn the corner and be at my Grandmas house. The sensation was incredible.

When we got to Yaxha, everyone felt comfortable. The hotel was built by the producers of Survivor; they had used Yaxha for Survivor: Guatemala. It was a beautiful series of bungalows right on the bank of the lake. We spent the night talking about working on the mural in Santiago Zamora. Prof. Turner's daughter talked about the students we would be working with and explained to us some about the man behind El Plan Infinito, the school on the side of which we would be painting the mural. We also all went over the design ideas I had sketched out for the mural. Several of us got very involved figuring out what symbols and designs we wanted to present to the director and to the towns artist Edgar, who we worked with throughout painting the mural.

The next morning we all got up very early and went to the park in the mists of dawn. We were practically alone in the park, since it is not as famous as Tikal. A lot of the temples have not been excavated so the whole park is an eerie jungle filled with mounds that were once temples and buildings. we spent the morning wondering through the park then drove back to Flores to grab a plane back to Antigua.

Stay tuned for part six!