Friday, March 21, 2008

First Visitors

First Visitors…

This past week Carolyn and Dorothy were here with me in Guatemala! I cannot even describe how I felt waiting for them at the airport…I felt like I was seven again waiting for Christmas morning to see what Santa had brought me! Having them here was almost like a dream, I could not believe that someone from the States was here…in Guatemala, it was surreal! I couldn’t sleep the first night they were here for fear I would wake up the next day and they wouldn’t be there!

We had a great week though. We traveled to the lake, my site and Antigua! It was so relaxing just sitting around talking, catching up and showing them “my country.” It was fun having them in my house, making dinners and just showing them what an average day in the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer entails, which sometimes as they saw is unpredictable! I was really sad to see them go but oddly enough I was ready to get back to work and San Martin, it has become home! It feels good after I have been gone for a weekend to come back and just relax, and know where everything is…kind of like coming home from college for Christmas Break! I never really thought that this place would feel like “home”

This week is Semana Santa and I am spending Thursday and Friday in Antigua to see all the processions there! Antigua has the biggest celebrations in Guatemala during Semana Santa. I am going to spend Saturday and Sunday here in San Martin! I am really exciting to see all the processions and to see how active San Martin becomes!

It is interesting how some things are the same no matter where you are in the world! I don’t know how many of you learned to player the recorder in 4th grade but I sure did! I loved learning, it was so much fun, although I am sure my parents didn’t enjoy it as much! Where am I going with this…the other day I was sitting in the office and I hear a young boy playing the same song that I learned to play when I was in 4th grade and it totally took me back to my days of innocence! The next day the streets were filled with kids and their recorders and that is when I began to understand how much my parents probably hated it! There were way to many kids that did not know how to play it, many groups of boys who just wanted to see who could make the loudest sound and still others who just played random notes, someone help me!

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

What a week...

Last week was the week from HE double hockey stick…haha just had to throw that one in for a little humor before I begin my rant! So here is how my week went…

1. My counterparts did not have any of the stuff typed up I had left them for the
weekend and on top of that they lost the papers!
2. My camera got stolen out of our office.
3. I broke a cup and a dish at the house of one of the guys I work with.
4. I thought I had lost my grandma’s ring (found it three days later).
5. The zipper on my favorite skirt ripped.
6. My charger died so my computer is not able to charge.
7. The camera I was going to buy off of amazon.com sold before I could buy it.
8. I could not get my packages at the training center (then did by sheer luck).
9. They changed the password on the computers at the training center so I could not use it.
10. Worst of all, I didn’t have minutes to call anyone and cry, sad!

So this was my week last week, probably one of the worst of my life. I was so sad that I tossed around the idea of going to the airport and buying a ticket home…I was in a bad state!

But then I met my sitemate in Antigua and had a great day hanging out, laughing and eating of course! We went back to San Martin and made Mac and Cheese (the real stuff, courtesy of Courtney, THANK YOU)! That mac and cheese made all the other stuff seem like it was far, far away! We went to Marc’s restaurant (an American that lives in San Martin) to make our mac and cheese and watch a movie on the big screen/projector thing that he has and it was idyllic compared to the rest of the week!

This week has started off much better! We sold half of our coffee yesterday which is about 400 lbs of dried beans which is approximately 1800 lbs of the coffee fruit! I was like a proud mother at a school play while they were loading it into the truck! The farmers were so excited and proud of what was happening that it was hard not to be beaming like them! Some of the farmers got checks for Q1200 – Q1500 ($160-200)! That is something here!

I am really excited too because I am going to have my first visitors on Saturday! Carolyn and Dorothy, the women who I lived with this summer, are coming for Carolyn’s spring break (Carolyn was my professor at LFC, well more like one of my closest friends)! I cannot wait to show them San Martin and Guatemala!