Day 1

Tiff and I landed in Guate (Guatemala City) just after 8p.m. on Friday night. Walking through the terminal with a handful of Guatemaltecos, a band of obnoxious Rotarians, and an uncomfortable load of luggage, we found our ride in the parking lot that was packed with cars like sardines in a tin can. If you’ve ever seen that video of the busy intersection in India, you get the basic gist of the ride to our accommodation for the evening.

Guatemala City is, in a word, shocking. It's a grab bag of modernism and archaism, civility and unrest, accessibility and total desolation. RadioShacks sit next to open-air, indigenous markets, and men herd goats down sidewalks, passing groups of adolescents wearing over sized FUBU shirts and talking on their cell phones.

It’s estimated that, in this city, there is 1 police officer for every 5,000 civilians. The national army compensates for this incongruity by stocking the streets with camouflaged officials armed with Uzis and the inclination to subjugate vigilantes by any means necessary. Family restaurants also hire machine-gun toting men to guard their doors, and patrons pass by without even a blink or a shifting eye.

More often than not, public buses spill over with passengers, and it’s an unspoken rule in Guatemala that when the public buses are full, commercial and civilian trucks will take the overflow. In this stead, nearly every Coco-Cola or farming truck is packed with romping, rolling men and children.

Highways are packed with trash, unsupervised children, and families crossing the four-lane highways. Seeing these scenes play over and over every few kilometers, one begins to feel like she might be watching vignettes from a border refugee surveillance camera.

Tiff and I had a sleepless night in Guate. We heard a rooster screeching (not crowing) all night outside our window, a viscous dog fight in which we’re pretty sure at least one dog died, one knock-down, drag out family fight (involving parents, small children, and pets), and five pistol shots within ear shot. Everything about the capitol seems frantic, lawless and anarchic.

Normally, I wouldn't think these experiences generally need to be made public. I share them because I think I realized that night that most of us are merely reacting to the world that surrounds us--sometimes positively, oftentimes negatively. To a certain extent, we’re all simply (and sometimes alarmingly) products of the environments in which we live.

After only a few hours, I see that this is the type of place that will vastly broaden my perspective. So. Here's to new surroundings.