Mountain School Update

Our week at La Escuela de la Montaña (The Mountain School) was a transformative language and cultural immersion experience for the girls. Some girls worried that their brains might explode with four hours of intensive language instruction each day, but they thrived with the one-on-one individualized attention and learned more than seemed possible in one week. Ruth and Simone were ecstatic to finally learn the past tense. Abby loved her teacher Tito’s fast-paced instruction and covered an impressive amount of new grammar. Maggie practiced her conversational skills in long discussions with her teacher, Lorena, about Guatemalan history and politics.

Throughout the week, the girls ate all their meals with local families, allowing them a personal experience in the daily life of a typical Guatemalan family. Annalise connected with her host brother during several pick-up soccer games. Emelia and Kat were often the last to return from dinner, having been absorbed in discussions about Guatemalan people and culture with their host mother, Adelaida. The other girls had the chance to also meet Adelaida later in the week when she came to give us an empanada cooking lesson.

In between classes and meals, the Mountain School arranged to have locals come to speak to the girls about their personal experiences in the Guatemalan Civil War and the history and founding of Fatima, the town nearest the school. The themes and issues that the girls have been reading about in their classes all semester were brought alive by these intense first-hand accounts. Ruben spoke about the forming of the local community of Fatima by a group of families that left a nearby coffee finca after being exploited as workers for many years. Pedro gave a heart-wrenching account of his kidnapping and torture by the Guatemalan military. The girls were especially affected by Gloria’s story of serving as a guerrilla for eight years during the war. Mikaela in particular found this account to be one of the most powerful experiences from the week and drew connections to the reading the girls have done from Bridge of Courage as part of history class. On Saturday, the group visited Santa Anita, a nearby cooperative town that Gloria and some of her fellow guerillas formed after the peace accords were signed.

Midway through the week, the girls helped host “Noche Cultural,” an evening of crafts and games that was very well attended by local youth. Eliza worked with a local little boy to use recycled bottles and paper to make a little pig they named Señor Flamenco. Other girls played cards and chatted in Spanish. Anna enjoyed the opportunity to talk with Guatemalans close to her own age and spent most of the night deep in conversation with local girls.

At the end of the school week, the girls helped prepare and serve lunch to the host families that had feed us all week. They showcased their Spanish skills with a performance of the song “Rayando el Sol”  and thanked their Mountain School teachers with an adaption of a TTS awards ceremony, for which they hand-made personalized awards for each teacher. At the end of the week, we were sad to leave the host families and teachers, but excitedly anticipating the beach. ¡Vamos a la playa!

-- Heather