Climbing Pacaya

WOOHOO! All I can say is, BEAUTIFUL! I haven't heard silence like that, looking at landscape like that, since...jamas! (Never!) It took us about an hour and a half or two hours to climb to the base of the valcano, where I gave my lesson to the teachers (only an hour or so), and then another 30 or 40 minutes to climb up the volcano. We couldn't climb after a certain distance (about halfway up), since the rocks became more fine, and the danger more real. (Quite a few times during our rest near the top, we saw the volcano spitting out massive boulders which tumbled down the face to the ravine below.) ¡Chilero! (Cool!)

Climbing up and over those sharp, magma rocks, I could image how Frodo and Samwise might have felt on the cruel slopes of Mount Doom.

I was feeling a lot today, a wave of discouragement and negative emotions which almost stole my enjoyment of this wonderful experience. I pushed through the lesson with the teachers, at a loss for how to conduct my usual training in such an open, distracting place, but God blessed the effort and we had a good discussion and review of the main principles of using Drama in the classroom, and even an impromptu smelling exercise which everyone enjoyed. I really think the teachers are won over to the value of these methods! They're more and more interested in my lessons. I think I'm growing as a teacher, too, which helps a lot.

Did I mention I'm only eating fruits and vegetables today? (I've been feeling yucky eating all this fatty, greasy food, so I'm trying to get back into some good habits.) By now, I had eaten all I'd brought and was starving, which didn't help my emotional state. I just tried to keep my bad attitude from seeping out and spoiling a great day. Ugh, I hate it when I get in these moods. I noticed how I was isolating myself from everyone, choosing to walk on ahead of the group or lag behind to find solace and comfort in the solitude and the beauty all around me. I tried to tell Tania about it, but it was hard with the language barrier and the exertion of the climb, so I just tried to pray in my heart and keep my thoughts positive. Once we got as high as we could go up the volcano, Tania and I lagged behind and prayed. Actually, I went a little distance from her and had a private prayer with God while she had her own time alone in the silent magma wasteland. Praying helped a lot, and I got to express all the pain and emotion my heart ached to release. It was nice to be able to cry openly without worrying about anyone watching or overhearing my cries to God, especially looking out over such a special landscape. It was a beautiful moment. Unfortunately, once we climbed down the volcano, I felt the battle with the emotions resume full force. Satan knows exactly where to shoot me, and he wasn't sparing any ammunition triggering my worst fears, emotionally. Maybe someday I'll figure out how to handle this struggle more successfully and spiritually. For now, I'll just have to trust God's grace to overlook my immaturity, and put my hope in his power to change it. When we finally climbed down the mountain around 4pm, and hitched all the bus-rides back into Guatemala City, it was about 7:30-8pm. We had some Pollo Campero (I had frijoles y platanos), I felt a little better, and then everyone split up to take different buses home. I went with Edgar to meet his wife at the University, where they would take me home in their car. (It wasn't safe to ride the bus to my house that late.)

About an hour later, I said goodbye to Edgar and his wife, Alma, and gratefully entered my home to greet my bed.