This is part 9, and the final post of a multi-part series written by Lee, the proud dad of a Guatemala-born son, who just returned from vacation in Guatemala with his family for the first time since adopting.

The last day of our trip, we went to visit a small Jewish congregation called Casa Hillel in Zona 11, on the outskirts of Guatemala City. The ride there took about 20 minutes through nondescript neighborhoods. The group meets in a rented house and welcomed all of us very warmly. These are people who've pursued Judaism on their own, for different reasons. The established Jewish community in Guatemala, more centrally located in GC, wants nothing to do with them, mostly because it follows Orthodox Jewish practice, which makes conversion very difficult (they would not consider our son, nor Sonia's, truly Jewish either), but also quite likely for  race/class reasons. The Casa Hillel folks looked like our children and I hope we return to visit them many times in the future.
 
 One of the reasons we adopted from Guatemala was the many connections between Hispanic culture/countries and Judaism and we've tried to integrate the two in our own lives.

    This is part 8 of a multi-part series written by Lee, the proud dad of a Guatemala-born son, who just returned from vacation in Guatemala with his family for the first time since adopting

To go back for a moment to Lake Atitlan, even Paradise has its minor flaws. One afternoon, the boys found a scorpion crawling across the floor in the bedroom! They're actually not deadly scorpions, but their stings are no laughing matter either. We scooped it up with some paper into a plastic bag and safely released it in the bushes away from the house. The boys were fascinated. Sonia and her son found another one later crawling near their bungalow. And odd insect bites (we think) - my partner and I got to Guatemala City after a day of travel from Lake Atitlan to Chichicastenango to GC and found our legs dotted with very itchy welts that seemed like bites of some kind. After a couple of days, the itching was gone, but we really can't figure out where they came from/how we got them, as we really weren't walking around in shorts.

This is part 7 of a multi-part series written by Lee, the proud dad of a Guatemala-born son, who just returned from vacation in Guatemala with his family for the first time since adopting

Part 7

Thursday, May 29, was one long day! Some on the list [this is another list where Lee posts] may remember that I'd posted a question about going to Chichicastenango with a 5 year old. Well, we decided to go ahead and do it. Sonia and her son, who at one point had told me that there was no way she was going there, surrendered to the Path of the Maharajah and joined us, rather than head directly to Guatemala City on their own.
 
 By the time we got to Pana on the lancha and then hit the bank for Quetzales, it was 9:45. We drove for about 90 minutes. Our son, uncharacteristically, conked out on the ride - probably a combination of a growth spurt which coincided with our trip and just the newness of everything.
 
 Chichicastenango is up in the highlands and it was actually a refreshingly cool day. Perfecto left us off at the Hotel San Tomas, where we paid to use the bathroom. While we pulled everything together, the boys enjoyed the courtyard of the hotel, with its marimba player, fountains, and many parrots.
 
 

 This is part 6 of a multi-part series written by Lee, the proud dad of a Guatemala-born son, who just returned from vacation in Guatemala with his family for the first time since adopting

Part 6

 For our last full day up at Lake Atitlan we went to visit a Maya Works project in San Marcos, specifically a group of women who make kippot (yarmulkes). Since we're Jewish, and actually have had some of the kippot for several years, we wanted to meet the women who make them and learn a bit about their lives. I'd emailed Maya Works-Guatemala a few weeks before our trip and they were very accommodating (I'd been advised by the Maya Works office here in the US to write them in Spanish, if at all possible, which is what I did and our communication was all in Spanish). We were asked to bring some soft drinks and snacks for the women and to try to buy the kippot from the women directly (rather than through their "leader").
  
 We took a public lancha to San Marcos (which the boys loved), hailing it down from the dock at the house we were renting, much like you'd hail a taxi! San Marcos is an interesting place. The lower town is a retreat/spirituality center. In fact there was one such center right by the dock offering services I had never ever heard of. My favorite was "Partnering with Your Inner Child." I've heard of getting in touch with one's inner child and I suppose that partnering is the next level of that relationship.
 
 Maria, the leader, and her assistant, Marta, met us at the dock about 15 minutes after we arrived. The lower town was dotted with massage places, restaurants, hotels etc. It was very pleasant, with lots of vegetation and solid sidewalks. There was also a bilingual Kakchiquel-Spanish preschool in this part of town.
 
 Soon, we were in the upper town, walking past the school, various tiendas, and along a dirt-and-rocks street until we came to a building where there were about 15 women present, some of them weaving Kippot. A few of the women's children were with them. We served them the soft drinks and cookies as we talked - I'm sure they were amused to be served by men!
 
 

This is part 5 of a multi-part series written by Lee, the proud dad of a Guatemala-born son, who just returned from vacation in Guatemala with his family for the first time since adopting.

Part 5

 Waking up at Pamakanya (the name of the house/property we rented) was just amazing - the waters of the lake are really calm in the morning and the volcanoes just loom in the distance, sometimes with a little bit of cloud covering them at the top. Now imagine that, um, you're getting this view as you look out the window while you are sitting on the toilet or taking a shower!
 
 The second day, my family had arranged a tour of some of the Maya villages around the lake with a guide, while Sonia, her son, and her friend, Abby, went off on an adventure of their own - to the home of the mother of the cook we had hired to view the blankets she weaves (and which they bought). The mother lives at the top of a huge hill in the village of Santa Rosa and they had quite an adventure.
 
The boat arrived at our house with another set of tour participants - an older couple from Chihuahua, Mexico. So, we did the entire tour en espanol.

This is part 4 of a multi-part series written by Lee, the proud dad of a Guatemala-born son, who just returned from vacation in Guatemala with his family for the first time since adopting.

Part 4

On the third day of the trip, we began to see our son really begin to use his Spanish. Before our trip, he had told us on several occasions when we would try to get him to speak Spanish that "I don't speak Spanish here, only in Guatemala." The first couple of days, we had to push him even to say "hola" and "gracias" but when we got back to our hotel after walking around Antigua, he took out the dolls he had bought (a boy and a girl) and began to play with them - en espanol. For about 20 minutes straight!!
 
 

This is part 3 of a multi-part series written by Lee, the proud dad of a Guatemala-born son, who just returned from vacation in Guatemala with his family for the first time since adopting.

Part 3

Our first full day in Guatemala, my son and I were up very early and we walked around the grounds and grabbed some early breakfast (before we later all tucked into the great buffet breakfast that the Porta Hotel Antigua provides). We hung out at the pool all morning (the boys' immediate request) and then Sonia and her son were heading to Lake Atitlan, preceding us by a day to the house that they were renting. The family of a Guatemalan friend of hers who was joining us at the lake, came to the hotel and visited; it was very nice talking to them. Then Sonia managed to scramble with less than
 an hour to check out, get some lunch at Pollo Campero, and make it to the Atitrans van for the trip to Panajachel, the gateway to Lake Atitlan.
 
 

The ride to Antigua from the airport looked virtually the same as it had back when we were all adopting, and it was punctuated only by 2 5-year old boys' asking "when are we there?" and "can we swim when we get there?" We stayed at the Porta Hotel Antigua and we will definitely stay there again when we go back to Guatemala. It was beautiful - the grounds were just amazing, the rooms were nice, and yes, they have a wonderful swimming pool.

This is part one of a multi-part series written by Lee, the proud dad of a Guatemala-born son, who just returned from vacation in Guatemala with his family for the first time since adopting.

Part 1

We'd been wanting to go back to Guatemala with our son for at least the past 2 years and decided to go when he was 5-ish, figuring he'd be at a good age to enjoy and 'appreciate' the trip at that age. Originally, Sonia was not going to be joining us - a dad with a son from the same hogar as my son was going to go with us and we'd been discussing/planning aspects of the trip with him since last summer.  About a month before we were set to leave, the other dad called and said he was cancelling because he did not feel comfortable taking his son to Guatemala right now.  We know Sonia's the spontaneous type and we do lots of Guatemala-related activities with her and her son (and she and I discuss this stuff ad nauseum!), so we figured she could turn on a dime with 3 weeks to go before a big trip and say yes. She didn't disappoint us!