For the second time, we packed up our belongings and brought our sons home from Guatemala on Saturday.  There’s really no comparing the two trips.  They’re older, (potty trained, thank you Jesus!), understand what’s going on, are attached to us, and it’s “going home” for them now, too.  It was almost like an entirely different trip.

I was thinking, in the airport, how much this felt like being with totally different kids.  And then I looked up, and they took me back.

Ok, so maybe they’re not entirely different. 

Sunday, we traveled across the Guatemalan highlands to one of the largest open-air markets in the country in a town called Santo Tomás Chichicastenango.  Saint Thomas is the town’s patron saint, and many of the boys’ are given Tomás as a first name.  The rest of the town’s name is Mayan and means “the place of the Chichicaste plant.”  Chichicaste being a poisonous hedge ivy with tiny hairs on its leaves that cause intense itching when touched.

We didn’t touch any, so we can’t speak to that aspect.  But we did love the town.  It’s one of the two sites Fred and I got to see 3 1/2 years ago, and he wanted to be sure we brought the boys to see it this time, too.

A number of tourism groups take buses to Chichicastenango, so if you’re looking for a well-traveled road, a place to barter for some great authentic (or tourist-y) souveniers, and a place that’s accustomed to (and eager to host!) foreigners, this is the one for you.  Market days are Sunday and Thursday every week.

Scenes from Chichicastenango: Read the rest of this entry

The four of us completed our most extreme-adventure-type activity of the week this morning.  Climbing to the summit of Volcan Pacaya – one of at least four volcanoes close to Guatemala City.

It was an early morning.  Our driver and guide picked us up at 6 a.m.  By 9:30 we had climbed to the top and were eating roasted marshmallows near an active lava-flow. 

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After two fairly intense days in the jungle, and with a volcano climb ahead of us tomorrow, we decided to make today a light one.  We relaxed at the hotel most of the day, then headed downtown to the Aurora Park Zoo, Guatemala’s national zoo and the most attractively set-up one Fred and I have ever seen.

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Writing a little out of order today. We just returned to Guatemala City from a 2-day trip to the northern departamento (like a state in the U.S.) of Petén to see the Maya ruins at Tikal and the rainforest and ruins at Yaxhá. The hotel at which we stayed in Tikal State Park had electricity for exactly 6 hours a day – 6:30-8:30 a.m. and 6-10 p.m., provided by generators. It was also hot, humid, and we made good use of our mosquito repellent. Aside from those rustic elements, it was a pretty nice place to stay.

Needless to say, no wi-fi in the rooms, though, so I’m behind on posting. But since that experience is fresh in my mind, I’ll come back to the days I’ve missed later. Read the rest of this entry

The Overview:  For this first day of hard-core tourism, we hit the city of Antigua, Guatemala and the surrounding Maya towns.  Brace yourselves for a lot of pictures because I find it’s easier to show than to try to explain what it’s like traveling around Guatemala.

Common Sights:

1) Cathedrals – the Spaniards were busy folks (unfortunately enslaving the local Maya people as part of the process) back in the 15th-16th century!  Ever pueblo (village) we visited had a major cathedral in its town square.  Antigua itself has dozens of churches, many of them major cathedrals, too.

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When Kim and I were passing through immigration in Guatemala City Airport, we were forced to choose one of two lines: “Central Americans” or “Foreigners.” While the two of us have spent a week of nights discussing how international adoption displaces children from their native culture and family, in this moment, choosing the Foreigners line, I felt an overwhelming sense of the reality of that separation for our kids.

It didn’t seem quite right. Our boys know they are from Guatemala. We read them books about Guatemala and show them videos of Guatemala on YouTube. Their original U.S. visas declared them “Guatemaltecos.” They proudly tell their classmates they are from Guatemala and that they are both Guatemalans and Americans. They should be standing in the Central Americans line.

I felt like telling the boys, “You know, you guys ought to be standing over there. This is your country too.” Read the rest of this entry

It was an early morning for our family, today!  Woke up at 3:45 to catch our first flight, and the next 10 hours looked pretty much like this:

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It’s been a while since I posted one of my “Q&A” topics, but given the reading I’ve been doing lately, I think I’m ready to tackle this one.  It’s a question Fred and I get with some regularity:  “Why did you choose to adopt?”  And for those considering adoption, I’d like to turn that question around.

I phrased the header to this post “Is Adoption Right for us?” on purpose.  As potential adoptive parents (“PAP’s” in adoption-circle lingo), that’s frequently where we start off.  Something – infertility, knowing another adoptive family, a major world crisis like the Haiti quakes this year, a picture of orphans somewhere in the world – SOMETHING gets us started thinking about whether we want to adopt.

But I’d like to start from the get-go with a better question:  Are we/Am I right for adoption? Read the rest of this entry

In 1 day our sons will be back in their birth country for the first time since they left with us in January of 2007.  

We’ll be there for a week, and it’s proven to be no small thing for me to narrow down what we try to see.  Read the rest of this entry