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!
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!
1 comment:
It sounds like you are having an amazing time. I'm happy for you!
Is your Mom reading this blog too?
-Laura
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