A Christmas to remember...

A Christmas to remember...

First off as I said before I spent Dec. 23rd cooking tamales and then the 24th I cooked even more food! I am telling you that I thought that my family ate a lot of food! We ate apples and grapes, the big Christmas fruits and on top of that we had mega amounts of tamales and cookies and pastries!

The evening of the 24th is when all the celebrating is done! I went to a Christmas program and then to church and after church we went home and ate more! We were eating because we were waiting for midnight...midnight here is like the 4th of July in the US expect everyone lets off their fireworks at the exact same time, you can only imagine! It was cool though to look out and be able to see fireworks across the mountains, and the sky was lit up with some many colors and everyone was out on the streets huging and wishing everyone a Merry Christmas! It was actually really cool! After midnight everyone goes to visit their family, I did not partake in this activity because I could not stay awak, it was way past my normal bedtime (9 pm)!

The 25th is just another day but without work, so we just lounged around the house and watched tons of TV! Although I was sick with the stomach flu which kinda made the day suck!

I am fine now and got it all out of my system, thank God! I hate having to travel on the buses with a sick stomach, not a fun experience!

Well I hope you all had a great Christmas and have an even better New Year!

Christmas in Guatemala

Feliz Navidad y Prospero Ano Nuevo! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!


I have been so busy these last two weeks that I have not had time to update my blog, sorry! We were delivering the gifts to all the communities this last week and having lots of fiestas for the end of the year in the office, my boys love a reason to drink! Now that I think about they are kind of like college students and this time I am the responsible one, weird how things change!


I am in Magdalena spending Christmas with my host family! It has been nice so far being with a family for the holidays because it has been harder than I thought it would be to be away from my family! I miss the weirdest stuff, the cooking, the SNOW, the crowds at the mall, the fighting that always accompanys the holidays, the feeling so full you think that your button might pop off and most of all (other than my family) the candy and sweets!


So the first night I was here the posada was at my host family´s house so I got to see the ceremony of moving it from house to house! Here Christmas is still very traditional! There are places that it is more commericalized but here in Magdalena it is still very much what Christmas is suppose to be about, celebrating the birth of Christ! In the US we have forgotten why we gather with friends and family but here the people know why they are celebrating the day! But the festive atmosphere is still the same!







Yesturday I spent the whole day cooking with my host mom! I got to make the mixture for the tamales and the salsa! Then in the afternoon we actually made the tamales! You use the big leaves of the tree that produces pacya (a type of veggie here)! Then you put the corn mixture in the leaves with a piece of meat and salsa then you fold it up and then tie it with string made from some more leaves! That was my job the tying of the tamales! It was fun because it reminded me of making the chocolate preztels we make at Christmas time!


Today is the big celebration lasting I guess until 1 or 2 in the morning so I will be one tired girl tomorrow because my noramal bedtime is around 9 pm! It will be a different Christmas but also one that I will never forget!







Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Kappa Alpha Theta Pride...

I cannot believe that it has been three weeks since I got to site! All the over volunteers have said that the days will sometimes be slow but large chunks of time will go fast, they are totally right! I have been really busy, visiting communities, still setting up my house, laying out in the 80 degree weather reading, and washing my clothes (by hand)! It has been really fun going out to the communities because I have met so many people that way. It is awesome because this week I hardly had to buy any food because every time we went to visit people they would give me, corn, limes, oranges, this other kind of fruit you find here, and all other kinds of veggies! It is great! Things are still kind of hard in the loneliness department but now I am starting to like the time I have to myself, I get a lot done, such as reading and cleaning, I know, me cleaning there must be something wrong! I have also really enjoyed cooking for myself! Although I cannot make much right now because of my limited space, I have been doing what I can! It turns out that I really enjoy cooking, it is something that I look forward to doing every night!

So a couple of things that I have noticed/experienced while I have been here in San Martin…

First off, the story that relates to the title of this blog! I was in the community of El Platanar the other day visiting some of the coffee producers and we passed this “construction site” and one of the guys came down to say hello to the guy I was with. When the guy got close enough I realized that the front of his t-shirt said “Kappa Alpha Theta,” I almost lost it but stayed composed but probably looked really weird trying to see the back so that I would know where it was from! You may be wondering how a man in Guatemala got his hands on a Theta t-shirt well, here in Guatemala there are these wonder stores called PACA! They are pretty much like a huge rummage sale (we all know how much I love those, right girls)! They have used American clothes and sometimes you can find real gems, for example, I found a pull over NorthFace fleece for Q 20 ($ 3) in the PACA market in Antigua! You can find almost anything in these stores/markets, including “Kappa Alpha Theta” t-shirts!

My main form of transportation here in San Martin are “jalones” which are just pick-up trucks that people use to take people to and from aldeas, or San Martin and Chimal! They are now, Q1 cheaper than the bus because of the rising gas prices! The other day, being the cheap person that I am, I decided to take one from San Martin to Chimal! I was at the front of the bed of the truck leaning up against the metal bars that they have put up around the bed of the truck! Taking a jalones has its advantages and disadvantages, the advantage being you get to take in the amazing views that you cannot see from the bus but the disadvantage it that many times you come away with some sort of injury! Mine, which resulted from bumping up against the metal bars was a huge BLACK bruise on the side of my hip, gotta love the fun times!

Chimal, which is short for Chimaltenango, the capital city of my department! Chimal is hard to describe because it is one of the dirtiest, polluted, disgusting city ever, but then it has this nice mall with a food court, a Gap, and a movie theater! It is amazing that you can go from communities that little to being able to find almost anything “normal” you want in Chimal! It blows my mind!

Well, that is about all for now! Nothing to exciting but you know life in San Martin is not all the exciting, wink!

I am here, San Martin Jilotepeque! I am in my first “apartment” really it is only two rooms with a bathroom. I moved in on Sunday, but moved in really isn’t the word since I didn’t have anything but clothes! I had to hit up the market for everything, plates, bowls, forks, food, a stove, etc.! I had to buy purified water which to buy your first one is expensive! I know that I probably got a “gringo” price for a lot of my things but when you don’t have anything you are willing to buy it at any price (supply and demand at its finest)!! Sunday night since I did not have any gas for my stove so I went to eat at a restaurant owned by another American! He married his wife and moved here and started this awesome restaurant/ homemade movie theater, where he shows whatever movies you want with a projector and a big screen, kinda like drive in theaters but no cars!

Everything went really smoothly moving in and all, expect for finding gas! It took me two days to finally get some. On Sunday I went to the electronic store to buy my stove and the guy there was really nice but I thought he was ripping me off by offering me the stove, the connector, the tube and the gas for Q 600 ($85), so I only bought the stove, the connector and the tube (Q395). Come to find out, it is expensive to buy your first cylinder of gas (Q 325) so I went back to the store to see if I could buy the gas for the extra Q 200. At first the guys were like no, sorry it will be Q 275! Of course me being me was not going to have that, if I could have bought it on Sunday for Q 200 more then I should be able to buy it now for that price! Well after a few minutes arguing and a call to the manager, they were going to sell it to me for Q 200! Victory for me and my Spanish! Well then they tried to give a cyclinder that only had like 5 lbs of gas (it holds 25 lbs.) and of course I was like, I don’t think so! I will not pay for this! So then I think they decided they did not want to deal with me any more and they gave me one that was significantly heavier although still not completely full, but hey I got a bargain!

My first day of work was yesterday (Monday)! Things went a lot better than they did on my site visit a week earlier! They had cleaned out an office for me and gave me a computer (like the first one my family owned when I was 11), but it works! They gave me a bunch of cost of productions that they had done with the farmers and told me to put them into Excel. At first I was thinking, I am not a secretary, but then as I went through and realized that the farmers did not really get what a cost of production was and that many of them were losing money, I realized my first job, to teach them about cost of production, to make sure they can all do it and to help them achieve a profit! I am a person who jumps to conclusions right away but my Peace Corps experience has been teaching that everything really does work out and that you have to just with whatever comes your way!

I went out to lunch with my two counterparts and a technico from San Joes Poaquil (where our other office is)! We went to a great comeador, carne asada (yummy) and I had a smoothie! Well instead of having a smoothie the men opted to split a liter of beer or so I thought! In the end, lunch ended up being 2 hours and 15 minutes long containing four carne asadas, one smoothie and four liters of beer (between three “Guatemalan” men, think shorter than me)! Let’s just say it was an interesting afternoon at the office, my counterparts were acting like “bolos” (A bolo is a drunk, normally sleeping on the sidewalk or somewhere in public)!
So I cannot believe that it is Thanksgiving already! I actually get to spend Thanksgiving with about 20 other volunteers in Guatemala City at the Ambassador’s house! I am pretty excited because I am sure it will be great food and I think since it is such an outrageous thing that it will make me miss my family a lot less (kind of tearing up just thinking about not being there)! We get to swim in the heated pool and play tennis if we want, kinda cool (actually I think it is really cool)! On that note, again I wish everyone a safe and Happy Thanksgiving!

What did I get myself into?!

The last week has been incredible busy! I had counterpart day, which is were all of our counterparts come and we have two days of workshops! It was actually really fun, I really liked my counterpart, Nazario! Then we actually went to our site for four days, whole other experience. My other counterpart is only a year older than me and is very serious and is a non-game playing kind of guy (totally opposite of me)! I will be working in an office of ten men (in the States I know that would deserve a Holla but here not so much)! It is actually intimidating because they are all trained in coffee production and then there is me, the white girl in the corner with her broken Spanish trying to give suggestions, talk about feeling out of place, wooo, wake up call for me!

Another aspect of my site visit was to find a place to live, which I did! I am really excited my very first apartment (if you can call it that)! I am going to be living on the second level of a family’s compound! I have a front porch, two rooms, a private bath, my own pila and a large back patio for drying my clothes and a tire garden! I am really excited about being on my own but at the same time I am terrified! Also I am the only one in my site! There are three other volunteers in the aldeas of my site but they only have transport two days a week so I will not see them all that much! I really experienced loneliness for the first time this past week! In three days it is going to be me, Spanish and a town full of Guatemalans! It really hit me that I am either going to be talking Spanish or not talking at all, and for all of you that know me well, the not talking part is probably not an option so my Spanish should really come along!

So I am going to let everyone know that I am scared SHITLESS (I know I said I would not cuss on this blog but no other words can describe this feeling)! I am so scared about my work, my counterpart, my site, being alone, knowing no one, having no friends, only speaking in Spanish and living on my own! I have never been so scared of anything in my entire life! Normally I am scared but know I will get through it but not now! In this situation there is nothing that I feel comfortable about and there is no one there to lean on, AHHH! I just wanted to let you all know that as happy as I am and as much fun as I am having here, I am also SCARED out of my mind! Mommy, Daddy….

I have a couple of funny stories…

Number one actually happened today while I was in Antigua with two of my guy friends! We were walking along and we happened upon a group of 6 men trying to unload a “tuk tuk” (a mini cab like thing)! Being the nice guys that my friends are they offered to help unload this “tuk tuk” from the truck! I thought it was the most hysterical thing that I might have experienced here! I could not resist taking pictures so here they are…

Number two: Some volunteers stumbled upon this dive bar in Antigua who always has really cheap deals on beer! With our limited income (Q26.00/ day durning training, which is equal to $3.75/day) we were totally excited and have become frequent (once a week) customers! We had an afternoon free this week and decided to grab a cold beer. When we got there they were having a special, two beers for Q8 which when you change that to dollars, we were drinking $0.53 beers! I just thought that some people back home, aka my friends and brother, would find that amusing!
I cannot believe it is almost Thanksgiving, WOW! If I do not get to post again before then I want to wish everyone a HAPPY THANKSGIVING!! I will be thinking about all of you and safe travels to all! And to my family I love you and miss you (P.S. Eat a lot for me and make sure to do a lot of shopping on Friday for me!)

My Site!!

I found out my site this week…I am going to be living in San Martín Jilotepeque, Chimaltenango! It is about a hour and a half from where I am now, located in the middle of the mountains, which are beautiful! I will be working with an organization called SID (Strategies for International Development), a US run NGO that works with farmers to help them organize so that they can sell and export for higher prices. I will be working in about five or six different aldeas (smaller communities around the municipal)! I am really excited because I think that I will learn a lot, from Spanish to legalizing here in Guatemala! I also get to learn Kaqchikel, one of the 22 Mayan languages here! I don’t know much more about it right now except that it is a new site for a marketing volunteer and that it is a new SID office! I meet my counterpart on Tuesday and leave for a five day site visit on Wednesday! I am just really excited to get started now that I know where I am going!

This has been a busy week, received our sites, had a final presentation and it was Dia de Muertes/Todos Santos! So Thursday the marketing gang headed to Santa Maria (three other trainees live there) for the kites! The Guatemalans believe that flying the kites allows them to be closer to the deceased! Families build these huge kites, 8-12 feet in diameter and then they go to the cemetery to fly them! We walked to Santiago to see the biggest ones in the area, it was INCREDIBLE! I cannot believe that they had kites that big hundreds of feet in the air! They are not just the diamond shaped kites these are octagon shaped kites with elaborate designs on them, seriously I cannot even begin to describe them! They also build four huge kites for different things within the community; these do not fly because they are like 50 feet high…and the same across! They are also elaborately designed with the history of Santiago and the Mayan traditions of the day!

When I got home I had the chance to go with my family to the cemetery to decorate their family graves! It is one of the most beautiful celebrations I have ever seen! Everyone brings flowers and wreaths to the graves of their deceased family members and it is a time to remember the family members and what their life stood for and who they were! They are so open about death…they still see it as a sad time but at the same time they see it as a happy time! My mom was asking me if we had the same holiday in the States and I was telling here that it would not be ok for kids to be running around flying kites in a cemetery in the States, the cemetery is sort of a different place for us! Then she continued to ask why do we not have a day to remember our family members didn’t we love them! I had no response for this statement, except that we remember in our own way! She also asked if we were scared of death in the States…I told her there was somewhat of a fear surrounding death but it was more of a personal thing! She then proceeded to tell me that I did not need to be scared of death because life is just a period of time before we began our everlasting life in the true Kingdom! I am blown away everyday by the my family’s faith…they believe that everything that happens in a good thing because God allowed it to happen therefore there is a higher meaning that we don’t know about! I am continually overwhelmed by their strength!

Well I swear-in in two weeks…I cannot wait! I will be officially living in my site on November 18th! I cannot wait to find my own house and set it all up so that I can start having visitors (come visit, flights are relatively cheap)! I have to say that if two years go as fast as the last two months, I am going to be home before you and I know it!

Random...

*** Note to readers...this was written very quickly so please excuse all the mistakes!!!

Hey everyone…this update is not really about anything! What an opening sentence makes you really want to read right?!

First off I want to thank my mother, brother and grandma for being faithful scribes, they have made me the envy of my technical training group! I get letters, packages or cards every week without fail! Also a big thanks to my best friend Juliane for an awesome care package, love ya!

I have gotten a lot of emails asking me what I need/want so since you asked….
Target Brand raisins and fruit snacks
Trail Mix
Sticky tabs to mark my tech book (cannot find any here)
Pens
Reeses/Baby Ruths are always good (candy bars are expensive)
Books, any kind are welcome ( I have read six books since I got here)
Little Peanut Butter packs (hard to come by here)
A travel size Febreeze and Downy De-wrinkler
Surprises are always welcome

I know some of this stuff sounds superficial and stupid but when you are feeling down or sorta homesick, these things make all the difference!

Now that I got ME out of the way, I do have a few more observations! First off, the women here are unbelievable! They work so much harder than any other people I have every met in my life! They will hike up our mountain, like an hour, and not an easy hike for fire wood, food, etc, and carry up to 50 lbs or more on their heads back down the mountain! They never stop, no matter what age they are! For example, my 83 year old grandmother still chops her wood every morning! At first I didn’t realize that she was actually the one doing the chopping, so one Saturday morning, I asked her to show me how to chop wood, her response was this (translated) “I don’t think that you can do it…young people can’t do anything these days!” I mean I knew we were a lazy generation but to be told by this 83 year old woman who was chopping wood that I could not do it was a shock! I wish I was better with words so that I could explain better the women of Guatemala, I guess the best words I can find in the thesaurus is astonishing, astounding and remarkable!

Today, Monday October 22, the US Ambassador to Guatemala came and spoke to us! It was nice to see the stance that the US has here in Guatemala but at the same time I was thinking the Peace Corps goals are the total opposite. He made some very good points and has some great ideas about how to help Guatemala develop! I also like him because he bought us all pizza for lunch and let me tell you, pizza has never tasted so good!

Well three weeks and three days until I officially swear in as a Peace Corps Volunteer! We are having our swearing-in service at the Ambassador’s residence in Guatemala City! It should be a good time, the exciting part is that our host families are invited which should be a nice treat for them! I have grown quite attached to my host family, mainly my mom! She is awesome! She is so cute, whenever I leave the house she always tells me to be careful, to watch my money and to call if I am going to be late! I know that I always complained about my parents nagging about stuff like that but now it is kind of comforting knowing that there is someone here looking out for me!!

You just might get what you wish for...

Well, I just got back from our Field Based Training in Coban, Alta Verapaz! It was an experience let me tell you! We went to visit Chirrepeca Tea Co-op, one of the five people in my group will be sent there for the two year assignment, hope it is not me! I learned one very important lesson about the Peace Corps experience...never hope for anything, just hope you have a roof over your head and food! So before we got to Coban I told everyone that I just did not want fleas in my bed, I just didn’t think that I could do that again! Well I got my wish, I didn’t have fleas because I did not have a mattress, I slept on a wooden bed with a wicker like mat (check my blog for pics)! To get to the house with a mattress I had to hike 5-7 minutes through a tea/corn/ banana field to get to the house, which turned out to be pretty nice because it was build like 6 months ago and the just got electricity about three years ago! While they were showing me the house, we were walking to get to the kitchen and we walked through a room which had my bed and they were like here we go, that is when I realized that I should have hoped to have fleas just so I could have had a mattress! Now that I am back in Magdalena I feel like I am at the Ritz Carleton! I do not have to poop in a hole and throw some water in and I do not have to shower with the chickens.

Coban is a very beautiful city, along with the surrounding areas. The tea co-op as rustic as it was, was wonderful! I got to experience nature at its finest, the silence of the night, the stars and true natural beauty that was intended for this earth! I know that I probably sound super corny but it seriously was one of the most relaxing and soothing places I have ever been! You knew that you were by yourself, that there was nothing interfering with everything around you, it actually gave me time to think, which is something that I have been doing more often, Mom and Dad you can pick your jaws up off the floor, its true!

So the week at the Tea Co-op was an eye opening experience and now I understand why they wait to give us that experience! They put us up in nice towns and nice homes for training because it really is culture shock when you get out there into some of the small communities that we will be living in! If they would have dropped me off in that situation six weeks ago I don’t know how I would have re-acted, it would have been hard! It is just amazing how there can people Guatemala City and the 50 mile radius around it and then there can be places like the Tea Co-op, it is just amazing they exist in the same country!

While we were in Coban we got to give a charla to a women weaving group in Que’chi, which is one of the indigenous languages of Guatemala. We had to give it in Spanish and use a translator! It was amazing that some women could not speak Spanish, they only spoke Que’chi. Then there were some, mostly younger that spoke both! I was talking to the family I was staying with and they said that the first language is Que’chi then you begin to learn Spanish when you begin to go to school! Que’chi is a very throaty language and there are no words with three syllables, which is why they have a difficult time with Mackenzie! I am really excited to see if I will get to learn an indigenous language, I think it would be really cool!

Well that is about it for now, nothing to exciting has really happened here, same ole same ole!

Till next time...

Just another day...

Sorry this is a really quick entry, bare with me on the explanations and spelling…

This week has been full of activity. I gave my first charla, which is like a mini talk/lesson on the channels of commercialization. There were about 15 women there plus the other trainees and my trainer. It went ok, the activity turned out really well because they really understood that they could make more money through selling directly to the stores than to middlemen which was the point so props to that! The best part was in the middle of my talk there was a woman there with a baby and he was hungry so she just took him off her back and whipped out her boob and stared breast feeding right there in the middle of the room in the middle of my charla. I mean it definitely not the first time that I have seen women just whip it out but I was kind of taken back that it was in the middle of my charla….that’s life I guess!

Saturday we went on another hike but this time we made it all the way to the top which is about 10,000 ft above sea level. We were up in the clouds, it was surreal! We could see the clouds below us moving and forming and you could smell the freshness of the air, it was so clear and crisp. At the top there is a really cool set up that was done by another Peace Corps training group. There are benches, swings, and a slide for the kids and some picnic areas too!

Saturday night we had our first real night out in Antigua. We went and had a great dinner for Q15 (about $2), then hit up some of the Happy Hours before going to this great bar that had dancing! Although I only danced a little it was fun being in that kind of environment again, the loud, somewhat packed bar where everyone is having a good time! It was so fun too because it was all Guatemalan and not over run with Americans. It was awesome to see some Guatemalans kick back, drink and dance (a very rare thing here)! We didn’t get home until 11:30, I felt so bad though because I was later than I expected and I felt like I was seventeen again and sneaking back into the house!

Today I am off to Coban in the state of Alta Verapaz for FBT (Field Based Training). We will be there for a week; working with a women’s weaving group, a tea co-op and another coffee group. It should been a fun and interesting trip. We have to give two more charlas, which sucks, but we also get to have a night out in Coban and on the way home we are going to some hot springs which will be a wonderful! When we get back I will only have 15 more days until I found out my site for the next two years, YAY!

I miss everyone and I am trying my hardest to email as much as I can but the internet is a rare thing here, or it cost me Q6/hour which is about one-third of what I make in a day! I am going to try to figure out a regular schedule once I get to my site and get settled in! Thank you to all who have sent cards, packages, emails and facebook messages, you do not know how much it means to me!

That’s right I have a life…

I got to have my first “night out” on Friday…YAY! First off let me calm you down before you get to excited for me… I was home by 8:30 and asleep by 9:30! It was really exciting though because we got to go to Antigua on a Friday night and have some beers and dinner! This is really exciting because we never get to do anything…we are suppose to be with our families all the time, which is normally great but sometimes I really need to just feel like I am 23 years old again! It almost feels like high school again, having a curfew, having to tell your family every time you leave the house, having to sneak around to drink…I am having major flashbacks!! It was really nice to be in a social setting and not a classroom session with other PCT…personalities come out and bonds begin to form…it was fun!

Saturday was the most incredible day that I have had here so far…weird it was our one month anniversary of being in country! I started out the day with a kick-ass conversation with my host dad…it was my first really long convo (an hour) that I have had here in Spanish! Then because no one else was home I got some quite time to read and relax before I began the day! Two other trainees for the neighboring town came up and met me and my fellow trainee here in Magdalena! We went shopping for lunch…this included hitting up the local corner market/store to get some veggies…then the careneria (meat store) which is also a mini hardware store…oh yea it was interesting! Then we went on this amazing hike up the mountain that Magdalena sits on…it had the most amazing views I have ever seen in my life! We could see Antigua and Chimaltenango (an hour and a half drive away)! It was absolutely the most tranquil moment I have had here…it was untouched by humans so we were completely surrounded by nature, in its purest form!

On our way back down the mountain, one of my fellow trainees saw someone she knew working on his land so we stopped and said hello, which turned into an hour session on farming, fruits, vegetables, and other things! Let me just say that I cannot wait til March when all the avocados are going to be ready…YAY! We tried some many different kinds of fruits straight from the tree…these included, the sweetest pears, sugar cane (which he peeled with a machete), and then this other fruit I have never seen before in my life and I cannot remember the name worth the life of me! It was just amazing that is man, who knew only one out of the four of us, took us in, feed us so much, and taught us all about his land, produce and his life! All I could think about was how fabulous this was and how here your day never has a plan it just always takes its own course…you could plan on having lunch at one but not end up eating until three because you met the coolest farmer ever!!!

Does this bus have windshield wipers…?

The day after the wedding I left for a four day trip to Tecpan, Chimaltaengo to visit Andrew and current PCV! There were two other trainees going to the same area, so we decided to all go together, so as we are waiting for the bus the flood gates opened up and it started to down pour! There was so much water that the road flooded and started to come on to the side walk, it was crazy! Finally in the middle of the down pouring our bus came…we ran to get on and were thankful for dryness! As we are pulling out, the other girl and I notice that our bus does not have windshield wipers…I could not see out the window and I am pretty sure that he couldn’t either…maybe just the outline of lights! All I kept thinking was, well this is just another experience to add to the list!

Tecpan is an interesting city…it is about 20,000 people but 98% of the people are indigenous and some do not speak Spanish, they only speak Cachikeal (sp?, it is one of the indigenous languages)! It was really good though to see how a PCV lives, works and spends a normal day! I learned a lot that I do not think I will learn from training…such as, how much work you will really do, how to cook on your own, what are the most important things to buy right away, etc! It was nice because I was able to see that not everything is going to go by the book and that not everything you do have to deal with your program…some the most successful things that Andrew has done have been with his secondary projects! One of those projects is organizing a children’s library for the town (way cool)!

When I returned for my trip I had to go to the training center to work on some “homework” so I finished up and was walking home with a friend when we came upon a huge crowd in the road, as we walked around and began talking to people, we found out that there was a “wreck” and the police were not letting people through! We decided to head back and see if we could get a bus back to our towns…we did find a bus but that bus decided since it could not get through, it would just drive up the wrong side of the Pan American highway and then drive down the other side the wrong way to our turn off! Let me tell you it is not a wonderful feeling to see a semi coming at you straight on with no control over the situation what-so-ever!

Here Comes the Bride…

So my host sister got married this past Saturday…the one word I would use to describe it is LOCO (crazy for you non-Spanish speakers)!

Up until Thursday, the house was abnormally calm but I came home for lunch on Thursday and it was out of control…there were people everywhere, food everywhere, pots and pans everywhere, flowers everywhere, it was crazy! So that night was all about organizations and then Friday morning at 3 am my host mom and sister hopped a bus for Guatemala City to buy even more flowers! That afternoon while I was shedding pork by hand I asked why they left so early and they told me because you have to get there early during September because everyone is getting married and they wanted the best flowers! I guess every bride no matter where you are want the best!

Like I said before I was the human shredder for the pork that was going into the soap for the civil ceremony/rehearsal dinner…I always tend to become a human something here, I have been the human fan more than once! My family was cooking for ONLY a hundred people on Friday night, that was nothing, the grooms family cooked for 800 people on Saturday night! They set up a tent outside the reception to cook it all! So Friday night was interesting because it was the civil ceremony, which should be a great occasion, but it was weird because no one was smiling, everyone looked somber, like it was a funeral! I was not sure what was going on but I still smiled for all the pictures, even though I am probably the only one!

Saturday morning I woke up at 6 a.m. and my house was FULL of people! They were beginning to make flower arrangements, cooking, decorating stuff…they were doing anything you could think of that needed to be done for a wedding and they were doing it all themselves…I could not believe my eyes!

I need to explain here that when I first moved in they were handing out invitations and I asked how many she was sending out…between 80 and 100…seems normal right…wrong! Eighty to a hundred invitations turned into over 800 people being invited to the wedding. And in the words of most Guatemalans, “How nice that you want a small wedding!” I am a small wedding is 800 people, normally weddings are between 1200-1500 people, could you imagine…absolutely not! During this whole process I had to explain why I am the same age as Miriam, my host sister, and I was not married. I also was asked how many people I wanted at my wedding…when I responded with 80 or so, they were like oh so the same size…I had to explain that, no, I only wanted 80 PEOPLE not invites!

The wedding was like anything other Catholic wedding, except that they never kissed at the end, they just started taking pictures! The reception was decorated like any other reception that I have ever been to but the strange thing was there was no dancing and no booze (we all know that rarely happens in the states)! I could not believe there was no dancing, I mean my family is really fun and outgoing and there was just nothing! We just sat there and ate and talked…in Spanish!

Hot Water Please

Here are a few more observations…

My main mode of transportation is old Indiana school buses. I take the Brownsburg, Crown Point and Tippecanoe Valley School Corporation buses on a daily basis. I think that I have found something to do when I get back, export old school buses to Guatemala. In addition to the daily yellow school buses I have to take “chicken bus” to get anywhere other than Santa Lucia. “Chicken Buses” are very colorfully decorated school buses that will take you any where you need to go. We all know that school buses are designed for 3 small children to a seat, well someone failed to mention that to the Guatemalans because they like to fit 3 large adults to one seat. Let me just say that I have become very intimate with several Guatemalans. For example, this past Sunday I, along with some other trainees, ventured to Antigua for the day. On the way home I was sitting with two oversided lovers with a little girl sitting on my lap and her mother straddling my legs. In about an area of one school bus seat there were four adults and one child! Another fascinating experience was my first trip to Antigua. When the bus left Magdalena all the seats were filled with three people and the aisle was almost full. Although the bus was bursting at the seams, we still picked up people, by the time we arrived in Antigua there were a good 120 people on the bus. Instead of thinking about money in terms of time, Guatemaltecos think about it in terms of people!

This past weekend I had my first experience with the drunks of Guatemala. My first experience was on the bus. I was sitting with this older gentleman and being nice was making small talk. Well small talk turned into a marriage proposal which I got out of by lying and telling him I had a boyfriend. My next experience was in Santo Tomas this past weekend. I had ventured down to meet some other trainees to watch as I described in my last post, people climb a greased tree. We had some time to kill, since we were on Guatemala time (Here in Guatemala if someone says it starts at 12 pm it will really start around 1 or 1:30 pm). Anyway, as we were enjoying our ice cream and cokes this drunk approaches us in fine form. As he gets closer it is apparent that his fly is down and he has decided not to wear any underwear. Oh yes this means that his “junk” was say Hey just like he was! The sad part of the story is he was not the only one not wearing underwear, there were a few more drunk who must believe it is easier not to wear underwear!

Guatemala is similar to the United States in the since that there are city people and non-city people. Today we had a trip to Guatemala City, the capital, with our Spanish classes. We had to visit the PC Headquarters, the hospital that the PC uses, and the bank. After all of this we had lunch at the mall! This mall was better than some in the States, a Zara, Bershka, Nine West, Nike, Apple, Tommy, and other big name stores! It also included a McDonald’s which provided a wonderful lunch (I don’t think I would ever say that in the States but man some hamburger sure tasted good)! After our wonderful lunch we went to the movie! We were all joking that our friends and family would ask what did you do this week, “Oh I ate at McDonald’s, did some shopping and went to a movie, sound like the Peace Corps to you?” The people I saw today were so much different than the people that live in the small towns throughout Guatemala. They are more liberal, dress just like us (maybe better) and are more progressive! It is amazing that there is such a difference, by that I mean, some people who live in the campo have and will never see a mall or a McDonald’s or anything like it!

I am really happy right now! I had this moment while I was riding the bus home on Monday where it just dawned on me how happy I am here! I know this was the right decision for me and right now I cannot imagine my life anywhere else! I might not love everything about my daily life but at the end of the day I go to sleep happy and fulfilled! (Although I cannot wait until I get a hot shower!)

A Litte Bit of Everything

I have officially been a Peace Corps Trainee for three weeks now! When I stop to think about it I feel as if I have already been here two years but at other times it goes by so quickly! This past week was another week of 6 hour Spanish classes but on top of that we began having 2-3 hours of technical training! During tech we learn about the different markets, how to use them, where they are, etc.! We are also learning about the community structure and where to start when we get to our sites. I am really excited because I am going to visit a PCV for 5 days next week, so I think I will have a better idea of what it is like in the field, which hopefully will clarify things!

My dining situation here has been an interesting experience. To begin with, as many know but few have truly experienced, you eat a lot of tortillas, but the differences comes when you are not just eating tortillas because they are there but using the tortillas as your utensil. When I first got here they gave me a spoon, fork and knife, but I soon realized they rarely eat with anything but the tortilla, so wanting to integrate into the culture I began to do the same thing! This was a good idea and a bad idea because now I am never given any but my tortillas so I am forced to eat them with every meal and this means I pick my meat up (like chunks of meat) and eat them with my bare hands! Sometimes I just laugh to myself thinking about how many hours were spent teaching me to be a lady when I eat, well sorry Mom and Dad those days are long gone!

Saturday September 15^th is Guatemalan Independence Day! The festivities begin on Friday night with the running of the torch! The running of the torch is where are the school children for the town go to the capital of the state, and light the town’s torch with the “Fire of Freedom” This is done because on September 14^th the leaders signed the Independence document and that night runners were sent with torches carrying the “Fire of Freedom” to all the towns throughout Guatemala! The reason that September 14^th is not Independence Day is that most Guatemalans did not know until the next day that they were free, so the 15^th is considered Independence Day because that is day Guatemala woke up free!

The day begins with a parade of all the school children in the town. There are dancers, marching bands (they are really good and of great pride to the community) and little Independence Day princesses and queens! The whole town comes out, there is a huge lunch in the town square! Later in the day the neighboring communities have a parade through town with the same kind of things as the first one! The highlight of my day was going to a neighboring town to watch the pallo asado, which is oiled pole! It is a 60 foot tree that has been striped of its bark and greased up from top to bottom! The idea of it is to get to the top, if you do you get Q500, which is about $70, a lot of money here! At first all of the drunks tried it then about an hour and half into it the serious men came out and it was awesome! My friends and I watched it for a solid three hours, it was an entertaining afternoon! (I am attaching pictures and a tube video of the event!)

Side note, this is all been told to me in Spanish so if there are some things that are not exactly correct please forgive!

This past week I had my first adventure picking flowers and pears! My host mom and I started the day hiking about 30 minutes up the side of the mountain to their orchard! When I say hike, I mean hike! We were so far up the mountain that I could see the outskirts of Guatemala City which is about 25 miles away! As soon as we got there I was put to work picking the flowers which were scattered all over the place. I never realized that picking flowers involved so much work, my back ached, my arms hurt, my feet were so cold that I could not feel them and I fell about a million times because the land is not terraced it is just a straight up hill you have to work on! Anyway it was my first experience with what I will be doing at least for the next three months!

I have been enlisted by my family to help throw this surprise party for my host sisters this Friday! She is getting married on Saturday, so I have been the person enlisted to make sure that everyone is dancing and having a good time! I think they think that I am this crazy American that loves a good time because sometimes I will just turn on my Itunes and dance around my room! There are times here you just have to let loose! So while my host mom is explaining my job to me, my host days turns on the stereo and starts dancing (salsa) and then drags me along with him! Let’s just say they might be rethinking their decision to make me in charge of the dancing!

Ok another long post so I will cut it off here, but if any of you have questions either leave me a post or email me what you would like to hear about!

Hard Labor

I had my first experience washing my own clothes today! I had to wash my underwear because our host moms do not do that, thank gosh that is all they do not do! So while I was washing them my host mom was washing clothes too and my jeans came up so I told her I need to learn how to wash my clothes because she would not be there to do it for me in three months! This learning/showing me turned in to me doing all the work, and work it was! They wash their clothes in the same sink like thing that they wash their dished, teeth, hands and food! It is called a pila, it is two sinks on either side of a large rectangle trough of water. My family is big enough that they have two back to back, so I was washing at one while my mom was washing at another when this experience happened. Let me just put it this way, I will not be able to help people because I will be washing my clothes all the time! In the time that she finished her bucket full of clothes I was just finishing my jeans! I will never again in my life complain about doing laundry!!!

I as I said in my last post my house is amazing! It is a two story house that opens up into a courtyard! Downstairs is the toilet and shower, along with the kitchen and living room! Upstairs is all of the bedrooms which all open up onto a balcony that over looks the courtyard! I am living the high life compared to most of the other trainees but with that said I am covered in flea bites and have to wear bug lotion to bed every night! I know that this is what I signed up for but it is really sad that I can sympathize with dogs now!

My daily routine will shock most of you that know me well! I go to sleep around 9 o’clock and get up…wait for it…6 or 6:15 every morning! I am actually the late riser in the house because everyone is out the door by 5:30-5:45 every morning, except my dona! I get up and eat breakfast, try to chit chat with my dona and then head off to my six hours of Spanish class. My 6 hours of Spanish is followed by another 2 hours of tech training! I have a distant memory of my Peace Corps recruiter telling my boredom is the biggest problem in the Peace Corps. I am really thinking he had no idea about the training program in Guatemala! I am so busy I feel like I barley say Hi to anyone in my family until 6 o’clock at night (oops, I mean afternoon)! Although the weekdays pass quickly the weekends are quite slow! There is not much going on other than hanging out or doing laundry or washing the floors so once those things are done which is normally by lunch time, they day is still young with nothing to do! This is when I totally understand about the boredom! You can only read, write in your journal or letters and study so much, which still leaves lots of time!

Magdalena is a very interesting town because it is a fairly large town with 2,000 people but it is primarily farming community! At first I didn’t think anyone worked here expect for in the stores but them my host family explained to me that most people in town that do not own a shop have land above the town on the mountain side and grow different products there! So pretty much they work in June and September then again in October and May, the beginning and the end of the growing seasons! There are two growing seasons here in Guatemala. The farmers plant one crop during the rainy season and a different one during the dry season.

For being a very conservative, mainly Catholic country the amount of PDA that young people display here is amazing! One afternoon after lunch I was returning to one of the other trainee’s house for our afternoon session of Spanish and there was a couple on the corner making out or sucking face as the Guatemalans called it! About 2 and a half hours later when I left they were still there “sucking face”! Every street corner you pass there is more than likely a young couple making out, I wish I knew how to stay “Get a room!”

Well again this is a long post so I will leave it with no more! I have figured out that I can save time in on the internet by writing a head of time and copying and pasting, which means I have a lot of time to write!

GUATEMALA!

¡Púchica! Wow! I am finally here in Guatemala, the land of eternal spring! I think that this country might be a hidden treasure of the world! It is beautiful, the land and the people, everything! I arrived in Guatemala City on August 29th just in time for the mid-afternoon rains, something that occurs everyday here May thru October. We hopped on a school bus and made our way to Santa Lucia Milpas Altas, a small community about 20 miles from the capital but about a 45 minute bus ride away. My group and I then began our three day orientation to Peace Corps Guatemala. The orientation is pretty much an overload of information that you will not remember for the life of you but should. We had language test (AHHH), thankfully I was placed in intermediate which means I am where I should be by the end but also means I have to advance two levels by the end of the three months! After the three day orientation we beginning our training.

PC Guatemala has a new kind of training which is called community based training, which means that we are divided into ten communities around Santa Lucia based on our tech program and our language ability. I am part of the Agriculture Marketing tech group and I am living in Magdalena Milpas Altas, about a 45 minute walk to the training center in Santa Lucia! They do not call it Milpas Altas for nothing! Milpas Altas means Tall Corn and they are not kidding! The corn stalks have to be at least ten feet high, I am not joking! Magdalena is a community of about 2,000 people, primarily farmers so some kind (my family grows fruits and flowers)! It is situated on the side of a mountain which results in incredible views!

My host family is awesome! It consists of my mama and my papa along with my two sisters (23 and 20) and my brother (17)! In addition to them my papa’s mother and my mama’s father live here, too! So in all there are eight of us! My first day here, which was Saturday, September 1, my mama’s father moved in too. He had a stroke and is now paralyzed on his left side of his body. This came as a shock to the family and the Peace Corps because PCVs have been working with this family in the agriculture sector for about eight years (mainly with the grandfather)! It was a hard adjustment for me and for the family. Such a huge change in the living situation all within hours of each other! I live right in the middle of town so every morning around 4:15 or 4:30 I am woken up by the blaring horn of the bus to take people to work/school in the capital! What can you do, you gotta love it!

Guatemala is everything I expected and more! I expected the most obvious things, the lack of organization, the dirtiness (trash everywhere), homes made from different materials, but what I did not expect is the openness and kindness that everyone shows to one another here! I will walk down the street with another gringa and everyone will say Buenas Dias or Buenas Tardes, it is incredible! The view from my balcony and the street throughout Magdalena provide a view that is indescribable! In the morning the view is clear as can be but by mid afternoon the fog has rolled in creating a mysterious feeling around the mountains!

This has been a really long post so I will not bore you with anymore but I should be posting again soon so keep checking!

On my Way

T-minus 30 hours! I cannot believe that I am finally leaving. Its seems like I have been awaiting/looking forward to this moment for the last eleven months never thinking it would come! Everyone keeps asking me how I feel, scared, excited, nervous, you know, the normal emotions, but in truth I cannot even put into words how I feel! The closest that I can come to describing my feelings would be for you to close your eyes (do it) and to imagine that excited feeling you get right before a big event, coupled that with that sinking feeling you get when you get bad news, in addition to that eerie feeling that you get when you think of the unknown...this my friends is how I feel right now (I think my body is going into overload)!

Enough about how I feel (I want to be a guy here and say feelings suck) but now on to more important things...the ground rules for my first blogging experience. I feel that laying some ground rules for myself and my avid readers (aka my DAD) will help prevent miscommunication and/or disappointment for my "avid" readers and myself! So the following is what you should and should not expect from my wonderful blogging over the next twenty-seven months!

First I want to let all my readers out there know that I should have never passed 10th grade English as my writing ability is not up to par (Carolyn can second this)! I am not insightful, poetic, deep or shall we say humorous but I am rather dry and factual (in addition to the worst speller in the world)! If you are reading this blog do not hold the expection of being monumental moved, emotionally altered, entertained or enlightened, I will mostly likey not be able to fill those expectations!

I love to use "..." and I tend to use them frequently as a result of never learning how to use correctly comma!

As I stated above, I could possible be the worst speller in the world (my 4th grade standardized test told me I was in the bottom 28th percentile of 4th graders)! I cannot guarntee that I will have access to spell check, with that said, please do not judge my intellectal ability on my spelling (I really am smart)!

I will try to refrain from the use of profanity (interject my friends and family laughing), YES I will try to refrain and keep this blog at the level of PG! I cannot guarntee that all subjects will be appropriate for all age levels but the content will be clean!

I sometimes think that odd things are entertaining or funny! If you think that my humor has gone astray please let me know!

On that note, I would love feedback (only postive of course)!

I hope you all enjoy!!!

Guatemala here I come!

Invitation

I finally got my official Peace Corps invitation on Thursday (6/14)...YAY! It has been a long process but I am sooooo excited about my new adventure! I will be in Guatemala begining August 27th, 2007. I will be there through Nov. 2009 working as a Marketing Facilitator for the Sustainable Agriculture project!

So what does a Marketing Facilitator do...I asked myself the same question. In my assignment descriptions it says that I will be working with small to medium size farmers to help farmers increase productivity and efficiency along with trying to increase the money that the products bring to the farmers! I guess 10 years of 4-H and living in a farming community qualifies me to work in the agriculture sector...who knows, I guess I will find out!

I am really excited about working, living and helping abroad in Guatemala! I am a little nervous about my spanish and the level I am at but I got around Spain I should be ok, right?! I am going to post more about what I think my two years will be like and some expectations that I have for myself. In addition, I will post some facts and figures about Guatemala so that you have some background info on where I am!