Moving on...

The coffee harvest is finally finished, thank goodness! We ended up selling more than we had originally thought which is wonderful but we still have lot of work to do! The biggest problem is that people need money right now, they have to buy food, clothing, and have other expenses, so they end selling to the coyotes for a lower price because the Co-op does not pay until the end of the season.

There was an article in the national newspaper recently describing how bad the economy is getting here (I know this is happening all over)! The price of bread, tortillas, rice and corn has almost doubled in the last two years while most families’ incomes have not. I know that this is happening in the United States too, but in Guatemala there are not government agencies to help the low income families or banks to give loans to those who can afford them! When people don’t have the money, they don’t eat! Even though this years coffee prices were the highest they have been in years, many people sold at lower prices because they needed the money, just one obstacle of working in a developing country!

This past week I have what the Peace Corps calls reconnect. It general it is pretty boring, lots of talking, sitting and listening but all that aside it was nice to see that I am not the only that has thought about going home, who has good days and bad ones, and who is sometimes so frustrated that I don’t think I can handle it anymore! I also thought that I was the only one who had to deal with “harassment” (not necessarily the kind that happens in the states). Here in Guatemala is the more the constant “shhhh shhh” that you get from guys on the streets or the dirty jokes that men make to one another that really starts to get under your skin! But I also had another 3 days of Spanish which was wonderful since I feel like my Spanish has been getting worse since I came to site, which is I didn’t think was possible!

It was funny though because I was so excited to see everyone but by the end of the week I was ready to get back to San Martin. I never realized how use to being alone I had gotten but I felt like I was on overload being around that many people for that long, it was weird! Also, San Martin has become where I am comfortable! It is kind of like when you take a vacation and it is wonderful but you also so glad to get home; that is what it was like!

I am moving this week to a real house! It has three rooms and a bathroom, cute little porch, and is with a great family! I am really excited I will try to upload pictures as soon as I get everything settled!

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!

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!

Amazing...

You know how your parents always asked you “If your friends jumped off a cliff would you?” Well this past week I did just that, I jumped off a 10 meter cliff because my friend did! We were at Semuc Champey which might be one of the most amazing, beautiful and tranquil places I have been! Semuc is in Alta Verpaz about 3 hours from Coban and is an amazing natural wonder. It is located in this huge gorge and I don’t know how to exactly explain it but it is a river that actually runs under this limestone plateau. The plateau has a bunch of natural pools, waterfalls and great places to jump off cliffs!

When you first get into the area you hike up the side of the mountain that forms the gorge, I mean straight up, it was hard but so worth it! When you get to the top, there is an amazing view of the whole gorge, the pools and the river! The hike down was a lot easier and you could hear the water rushing under the plateau, which was incredible! We then spent the next 4 hours lounging, swimming and exploring! At the end of our time there, our guide took us to where the plateau ends and he had us climb down this rope ladder to the cave like area under the plateau! You could see the river’s strength and how fast the water was moving out from under the plateau, it really made wonder how things this powerful and amazing exist because it is so unreal! So after the terrifying experience of climbing down the ladder, he took us to a spot where you can jump off into the water below, not my type of thrill but my friend and I decided to take the plunge after 10 minutes of building up courage! So he told me if I jumped he would, so I told him ok, you go first! The next thing I knew he was jumping and it was my turn, what was I thinking! It turned out to be an amazing adrenaline rush and cool experience! I am so glad that I did it!

The rest of my weekend consisted of PACA shopping, which I am proud to say that I came away with a new pair of jeans for Q10 (Q $1.30) and two new shirts! I love the PACA shopping here, anyone who visits, I promise will love it too! I also got to hangout with a bunch of people from my training group, most whom I have not seen since New Years! All in all this past two weeks have been great! My farmers are doing great with their processing and the coffee market is soaring, the highest it has been since the 1980’s!!! All in all things could not be better!

Finally...

In recent days I have received many anger messages for not updating my blog so here it is…

Work is keeping me busy, which has been good and bad! I love what I am doing so I enjoy most days but I have not been able to read and relax like I would like too! Sometimes I feel like I am back in the States working because it is a constant go, go, go, attitude in my office! This past week my organization signed a contract with a cooperative here in Guatemala to sell our coffee for Q 800 (about $100) per hundred pounds of processed coffee! This is a really good price because it is about Q 50 ($6.45) more than Free Trade price, yay! My groups also started harvesting full force this past week; one of them processed about 700 pounds of coffee in about 3 hours, which is about Q 1120 ($ 144.50)! So 700 pounds seems like a lot of coffee but really it is not all that much because 470 pounds of “uva” or the red fruit that contains the coffee beans only equals 100 pounds of actually coffee beans, so what this means is that you need a LOT of coffee fruit to equal a small amount of actually coffee!

This month and next month my communities will be processing about 40,000 pounds of coffee, wow!

Other than work I have been reading (keeping up on my favorite politician, O’bama and I recommend the book Three Cups of Tea), cooking (a southwestern black bean soap , attached if anyone wants to try it), and watching tons of DVDs! You may think it odd that I watch tons of movies but when you have a store that sells them for Q 10 ($ 1.45) you just have to stop and buy some every time you pass. I am really lucky too because they are normally not the bad versions that were filmed in the theaters but are good quality (meaning no reflected heads, no moving, etc.)! I highly recommend the current hit, Juno, very different, humorous and enjoyable movie!

I have also been able to travel a lit bit this month. After being in site for almost a month, which will make anyone go crazy, I went to Quetzaltenango or better known as Xela ‘shayla’ a K’iche Mayan word that means, 10 ideas or 10 wise men! It is the Guatemala equivalent of Chicago, I think! It has a very modern scene, lots of young professionals and also a wide variety of ethnic food, Indian, Middle Eastern, and even sushi! It is also very close to many ecotourism sites, an active volcano, the highest point in Guatemala, and other incredible hikes, which will be ventured upon by myself hopefully sooner than later (Brandon get in shape)!

There is not a whole lot of exciting things happening here, other than the fact that our new Mayor has decided to paint our Muni building, a bright blue! Also it rained here the other night for the first time since mid-December, which was highly appreciated on my end because now the dust will some what be dampened, YAY! I won’t have to do as much laundry this week.

I will try to be better about updating my blog but please be patient with me, I am a workin girl now, lol!

You never know what you are gonna get...

Everyday here is so unpredictable! For example, I have been trying to go to my post office for the last two weeks! I would pass by about three times a week, always in the morning because I knew for sure it was not open in the afternoon, and it was never open. I was thinking to myself that people must never get their mail or mail things to other people because how do they do it! This week I told myself I would go by everyday until it was open and if it was not open at all this week I was going to find out what was going on from the Municipal! Well to my luck it was open, finally! I introduced myself to the guy that works there and told him I needed to find out what my address was so that I could have my mail sent here. This conversation led to another about what I was doing here, what Peace Corps was, what was my state like in the US, did I like living here, and what did I think of the Mayan culture, random, don’t ask! I proceeded to tell him that I was learning Kaqchikel, the indigenous language spoken here and that I wanted to learn more about the history and culture. He then pointed to a Mayan statue that he had on the counter and told me about it and then gave it to me as a gift! I tried to insist that he did not need to do that but then it was forcefully put in my hands and I had not choice but to take it with me! I am continually surprised by the generosity and giving nature of most of the Guatemalans that I encounter, never would this have happened in the States!

Like I said before I started Kaqchikel classes this week! Wow, that is about the only word to describe my experience! The language is beautiful when spoken correctly, which means not by me! For many of the words you have to use your throat, a lot, but it is also kind of fun learning a language that is so unique. It is also difficult because they do not have a lot of the words that they have in Spanish and the verbs do not have one nice, simple conjugation but instead each one is different! All the guys in my office speak Kaqchikel and are so excited that I am learning it, finally! It also surprised a lot of the groups I work with that I would want to learn it because many of the adults my age do not know it and refuse to speak it if they do know it! It has helped my site mate’s community because now people who never spoke it or did know it are learning it because if the gringo is learning it I should learn it to!

More coffee picking continued last week. I helped pick coffee three more time and I am telling you all that I have never been so tired in my life! I do not know how they do it. If they are women, they get up make the fire, breakfast and dress the kids for school, pick coffee all morning, make lunch, take the coffee to be processed, go to the school to make the snacks for the kids, come home, clean, make dinner and put the kids to bed and somewhere in between do laundry and other things around the house! I am just tired picking coffee for an hour, there is no way I could do everything that they do, they are superwomen!

Coffee Picking

This month has already been busy…a whole week of planning and meeting about the upcoming harvest! I felt like I was back in the United States working because my guys wanted to work from 7 in the morning to 7 o’clock at night, can we say loco! I didn’t know that signed up to work til I could work no more! All of the other people in my group keep complaining that they do not have any work, they have nothing to do, I on the other hand can barely make dinner at night because I am so tired!

I spent this past weekend out at my sitemate’s house! While she was home for Christmas, someone donated a solar oven for her to bring here, so we invited some of the women in her women’s group over to bake some bread! When they saw the oven they were really skeptical but thankfully the corn bread and zucchini bread turned out fabulously! The women were amazed, they could not believe that it worked! Now they are asking her how much she would charge them to use it! It is funny the things that happen haphazardly are the things that work out the best here!

Today I picked coffee for the first time, it was interesting! I can see why people do not have a lot of coffee because it takes so long to harvest. We picked for about a half an hour and my coffee barely covered the bottom of my basket! You have to handpick every bean and you have to feel them all to see which ones needed picked! You have to pick the soft, squishy ones because they are the most ripe and ready! After my adventure picking coffee we tried out the desulpador (the machine that takes the shell off the coffee bean. It was really cool to see how in less than 10 minutes you can take the shells off almost 10 lbs of coffee fruit (which means an increase of about Q 200 for the farmers)! I cannot wait until the harvest really gets going, I think it is going to be exciting!

Tomorrow I am having breakfast with the Director of the Peace Corps! He is going to be in country for 4 days and he is traveling around meeting all of the volunteers! It should be interesting to get to talk to him and hear what he has to say about his future plans for the Peace Corps! I know that his main goal is to increase volunteer participation for adults 50 years and over!