Baby's First Birthday . Among welcome parties, going-away parties, retirement parties, anniversary parties, baby showers (translated as: "baby showers") ... Guatemalans have as many reasons to party as do Americans.

. Opening her presents.

She needed a little help posing.

.

Fascinated with the camera, the other kids didn't.

I get invites to celebrate what I used to consider relatively intimate get-togethers with relative strangers on a regular basis. The difference is that these are rarely intimate events. Usually I show up to at least 100 empty plastic chairs (because I tend to get there when the party "starts" - which, invariably, is way before it starts). Along with inviting half the town, the hosts are expected to "pour the house out the window": to be very generous with food, desserts, drinks (if alcoholic, clandestinely offered to the men and select few women only), music, and entertainment. While parties are big investments, the costs shift from family to family each time, so I feel like it evens out eventually. (Which is why I always come prepared to photojournalize the festivities - you won't ever catch me hosting one of these at my house, which effectively knocks me out of the reciprocation loop.)The serving of the cake signals the earliest appropriate time to go home. Unless you're gossip-starved, in which case you're free to stay all day. I love these parties, even though I tend to get the last-minute urge to bail out - with all the sitting around and mindless socializing and ear-splitting marimba music. In the end, though, it always makes me happy to see everyone else happy just to have chance to celebrate together. For Mo-towners, "the more" really does mean "the merrier" - which I believe is usually why I merit an invitation. That or the fact that I'm one of the only people in town with a camera.

Between racking up photos of himself and climbing on the ATV with the other kids, this little boy's afternoon was booked solid.

I am currently working on a spinoff blog that is related to the content here - my Peace Corps experiences and observations - but is a bit more focused (and random at the same time). In the interests of relevance and topical continuity, I have resisted consistent urges to post little tidbits from my ongoing self-experimentation in super-healthful and simpified living. My solution, therefore, is a whole separate blog where I drop in with short ruminations focused the pursuit of health, wellness, and simplicity (or the occasional lack thereof).

Here's my working introduction to the new blog:

"I would like to use this new forum to share the many lessons and benefits I glean along my journey to increased personal wellness during my service as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala, Central America. As volunteers, not only is it difficult to learn to cope without the consumerist comforts to which we’re all accustomed in our privileged lives as citizens of the United States, we must also learn how to keep ourselves healthy and sane within a brand new set of cultural, economic, and gastronomic norms. In rising to meet these challenges, volunteers tend to face wave after wave of personal change. Overall, despite “enduring” sub-(American)standard living circumstances (and nonexistent wage-earning), I believe that developmentally, we can achieve unlimited gains.

Just as at home, life doesn’t stop when one accepts a two-year employment position. We must continue to learn, grow, develop new skills, plan for the future, and take good care of ourselves – but none of this comes without effort. In the same way that volunteers may coast through their service without truly engaging with the community or improving in the language, one may also easily neglect his or her personal development. While we’re all here to improve the lives of the host-country nationals with whom we live and work, I believe we must take the time, and yes, self-focus, to cultivate our own well-being. A happy and healthy volunteer produces higher quality outcomes, develops deeper local relationships, and offers a fairer representation of the spirit of the American people.

With this blog I would like to explore and reflect upon the tools and techniques that I have found useful in my journey to greater wellness, here in rural Guatemala. While I consider myself to have been a health-conscious person since college, I discovered an enhanced commitment wellness and simplified living since my arrival here. Far removed from my former lifestyle and social patterns (as in, rushing from the hardest class the gym offered – Chisel – to make it to happy hour every Thursday night …), I have cultivated ever-more healthful behaviors, and I hope to continue my pursuit after my service, wherever the journey takes me."

Note: As evidenced by my dearth of recent postings, I've all but run out of ideas for this current blog. I'm thinking that I've just become so accustomed to life here that I'm starting to lose the "outsider's" perspective. And it's hard to make commentary on the familiar (a point whose corollary may explain my excitement about the novelty of the healthful lifestyle topics ...).

However, I remain dedicated to the content here and hope to resume regular postings in the near future. I'm well aware that the quality of the downtime at several of your workplaces depends on it. Rest assured, I take this responsibility seriously.

My most valuable collection. I like to rotate between them, to keep my toxic load nice and steady. (The Raid is for tarantulas. I basically just spray it around and hope.)

If I were to have a super power it would be this totally awesome mosquito-detection capability – as in, they bite me first, fast, and furiously (“must be that natural sweetness,” I always hear – from people who obviously don’t know me very well). Lucky for me, Guatemalan mosquitoes come with an extra-special feature: a countrywide malaria warning.

At home, my go-to solution for when it was hot, sticky, and mosquito-y outside was air-conditioning – specifically, retreating into buildings that possessed it, and thereby depriving the evil vampire insects of the succulent, life-giving tonic that is my blood.

Motown, however, has no air conditioning. (Which will become the subject of its own future post – the unrelenting trauma it bestows upon my daily life is yet too raw for me to consider the topic in any sort of bemused, detached-observer manner. And none of y’all wants to hear me whine.)

Local buildings can’t simultaneously permit badly-needed air flow while also blocking out mosquitoes. (That would require screens. Motown, however, has no screens. Dude, half my house has no walls.) So my weapons are bug spray. And a mosquito net. And … malaria medicine.

Ahh, the simple pleasures of bug spray: I never get it on fast enough, it does exactly squat for existing bites, and the higher the Deet content, the better it works. Which is totally cool if you’re not spending your two Peace Corps years in the pursuit of a simplified, chemical-free, and generally more healthful lifestyle.

And the mosquito net: I’ll admit, it took a while for the novelty of this one to wear off. I never got that four-poster princess bed every little American girl craves – so secretly, I was stoked as hell to nail up that net above my bed for the first time (and it’s still kind of comforting to sleep in my own personal princess box). It also keeps the detritus that slides in between my roof’s Spanish tiles from piling up on my sheets. I just have to take it down every few weeks and shake it off in the yard – and then pick off about three hundred sand spurs. (I’ve counted.) .It totally looks like a princess sleeps here, right?

The other pillow becomes a nightstand when you can't reach out and smack your snooze because there's net blocking it.Way better than washing my sheets every other day. Most fun of all is the malaria prophylaxis, Aralen: all Guatemala PCVs are required to take it. While I’m not sure what they would do to kids who don’t take it (unlike my site, the majority of volunteers live in altitudes way above the mosquito line), I pop my two not-at-all-choke-inducing pills every single Monday (that I remember).

The weekly doses are supposedly safe for at least six years (I’m here for two). It works by something like keeping the disease in its incubation stage in the human liver. So I could totally have malaria right now, or even for the entire two years, but never actually get sick – unless I stopped taking the drug. That’s a big no-no, and there’s apparently another drug for when you leave the risk zone, to kill off the bugs for good.

As I strive to adopt a more naturally based diet and lifestyle, flooding my body with a constant supply of toxic drug is super appealing (see Deet concerns above). Exciting me more about Aralen, however, is its effect on dreams – which is disturbing enough that some patients need to switch to another method of malaria prophy. Maybe Peace Corps should switch from: “The toughest job you’ll ever love,” to: “Guaranteed adventure: at least while you sleep.”

Personally, however, my dreams are just as real, scary, and crazy as they’ve always been. I still wake up confused by “memories” of events that occurred only in my dreams. Looks like my simplified lifestyle is working wonders.

In the fall of my first year of law school, we had Halloween costume contest and each 1L (first-year) section could win extra points for each of its participating members. I gamely grabbed my wetsuit, threw it on in the bathroom, wet down my hair, and made awkward, self-conscious surfing motions across the rotunda in front of everyone. (Yes, seriously. I can never pass up the take-it-for-the-team plea.)

I don’t know who won, but I do remember that was the year Napoleon Dynamite came out, and this one kid dressed, looked, and talked exactly like him (and as far as I witnessed, stayed in character all day) – so I bet he won. Everyone (cool) had seen the movie by that point (not me), and kids were congratulating dude all day on his costume’s awesomeness.

Being a surfer didn’t really attract a huge like-minded group in law school. (It might be exactly the opposite at, maybe, Hawaii – I would have worn a law student costume there. They would have been like – wait, I almost got it, give me a minute …).

I’m apparently on a quest for seemingly incompatible pursuits to illogically combine. When I decided to take a break (after five years, y’all) from my involvement in civil rights law to get into international human rights, I decided I had to go grassroots. And you can’t get much more grassroots than Peace Corps.

The only problem is that most kids join Peace Corps right after college. And college generally occurs before law school. So Peace Corps doesn’t necessarily cater to lawyers. Or doctors, or, say, accountants. I think the expectation is that you just get on with your career and join when you retire. Not me, I wanted both. Right now. That’s why I’m really lucky to be where I am, doing what I’m doing.

International human rights bodies as well as the international press have documented well the rampant rate and utter cruelty of violence against women in Guatemala. Not surprisingly then, women’s political participation is all but stunted here. And every day I interact with Guatemalan women who aren’t aware that Guatemalan women have rights.

I believe the quickest way to steal someone’s rights is to never let them know they have any – and I’m working under the assumption that the inverse should also hold true. Therefore, I like to use international research, bolstered by the national and international laws (and engagement with the departmental and national women’s rights associations), in working with my local women’s groups to teach them about, and hopefully expand their capacity to exercise, their basic human rights of political participation and lives without violence.

For a subjugated group to demand its rights, it must forge an identity that embraces those rights. Toward that goal, my counterpart and I are developing a comprehensive, grassroots campaign framework with the purpose of supporting women’s positive self-identities along with their human rights awareness.

When women participate politically, all community members benefit from their laser-sharp focus on the long-term well-being of their families, communities, and the environment. I’m think that by helping women interpret, understand, and use the law to achieve these outcomes, I’ve found the perfect mix of lawyering and Peace Corpsing (pronunciation: the homonym of taking out the middle of an apple).

Apparently, lawyers do surf. Just ask Keanu Reeves.

While some of you may know that I lived in Costa Rica during the summer of 2006, a closer guarded secret is that I actually endured a traumatic health crisis down there.

It started a few weeks after arriving; these little bumps emerged on my lips and face, and they began multiplying. I had been living at a surf camp with about 30 other kids, sharing all of our food and beverages, but no one else seemed to have any problems, so I didn't get too worried.

Until I woke up the next day with my right eye literally swollen shut. I grabbed the biggest sunglasses I could find and cried my way down the street to the clinic.

My Spanish was even worse then than it is now, but I could easily understand that the the nurses and doctor had absolutely no idea as to against what my splotchy, swollen face and mouth could possibly be reacting. Nevertheless, I received three shots (including steriods) and three prescriptions (including antibiotics). All for about $10 (including the consult).

The steriods worked fast, and I was able to hit the clubs with my friends that night. But I fought with milder versions of the same reaction for the remainder of the summer.

I thought I had put the whole literally ugly episode behind me when I got home that fall. Until one day at school when a telltale itchy bump materalized on my lip. The only rational conclusion: I had imported whatever parasite, bacteria, or virus I was hosting and it was simply a matter of time before I made international news as the origin of a face-mutating pandemic.

I went to visit my regular, trusted, American-trained doctor (read: whoever's on duty that day at UrgentCare). He was just as baffled as his Costa Rican counterpart, but worried enough to run some blood tests. Apparently Central American countries have a few problems with serious diseases.

The blood tests were clean, though. He proposed a battery of allergy tests, including elimination dieting. My reaction? Not gonna do it - wouldn't be prudent.

Instead I sat outside at school the next day for about four hours contemplating a lifetime of really huge sunglasses. Sure, Nicole Richie had recently popularized the look, but what judge would let me walk into a courtroom like that? I racked my brain for the missing link between Costa Rica and home.

And then I got it: mangoes - I ate them by the bushel all summer long and was pleasantly surprised to find them right there in the exotic fruit section at Harris Teeter - I done brung my mango habit home.

I wiped away my tears (seriously - imagine the Cowardly Lion looking back at you from the mirror), ran into the computer lab and Googled "mango allergy." The mango tree is related to poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac. And mango skins contain the irritant found in the sap and leaves. (Damn skins - my favorite way to eat them was to cut off two bowl-like sections from either side of the flat seed, cross-hatch into the meat with a knife, and flip them inside out, eating each little mango cube one by one. This results in much juicy messiness, necessitating face-wiping - and apparently eye-wiping - by mango skin-tainted hands. Mystery solved.)

I do have a point here - other than reiterating my world-traveler-fabulosity by pointing out the one other time in my life that I've lived outside of North Carolina. (Not couting those first two years during which I allegedly lived somehwere in Pennsylvania that I will probably never be able to point out on a map. If it even exits on a map.)

The point is: I woke up a day after my mystery fruit discovery to the exact same itchiness that I first experienced nearly three years ago, about five degrees closer to the equator. I reluctantly swiped my tongue across my lips - and yep, there was a bump. I did a quick mental check: no mango at all (even though I can handle the peeled fruit just fine). And then it hit me: mystery fruit.

I described it to my friend from Panama, who immediately recognized it as cashew fruit (that little bean-looking appendage is actually a pre-dried cashew - I know, that's nuts!). A quick consult with my medical adviser (Google) confirmed a link between mangoes and cashew fruit.

Which is a bummer, 'cause it was good.

One really unanticipated aspect of life in Motown is the incredible generosity that so many people show me. Almost every single day, I come home with a little story I just have to add to my happiness journal. (It's for sure gotta be better than having the opposite problem - an empty happiness journal. Dude, that would suck.)

It runs the gamut from people making me feel like they're always looking out for me ("You didn't bike by my house yesterday - were you sick?" No, I was just early.), to people making sure I feel welcome ("What are you doing this weekend? Come to the farm with our family and eat coconuts." - I'm there dude.), to the family who's pretty much adopted me.

This family owns the tienda where I do most of my shopping. They have assured me that anytime I'm hungry, they'll feed me; anytime I'm out of money, they'll run a tab; anytime I'm bored, they'll crack open a beer for me. And they were equally generous when my two American friends came to town: they opened a bottle of wine they'd saved for four years and offered us an endless supply of super good tostadas. And they gave my friend a rosary they'd picked up down south at one of those totally important Catholic pilgrimage sites. (Luckily I'd gotten one the week before, so I wasn't jealous. Much.)

But today I had the sweetest little surprise at lunch. Earlier I had been chatting with another muni worker and I mentioned that I like to leave a bit earlier for lunch so I have time to cook and eat and still get back when everyone else does. (No one else cooks or cleans - they either have a mom or wife for the dirty work.) .Right after I arrived home for lunch, a woman I'd never met was at my door with her little son, carrying a foil-covered bowl and a small grocery bag. She introduced herself as my coworker's wife, and explained that he told her how I always have to cook for myself. She had brought over a serving of their lunch for the day (spaghetti and this awesome meat sauce), and in the bag was a huge portion of sausages and an avocado. She then proceeded to invite me to join them on their weekend trips to their farm and the local river. (An offer I definitely couldn't refuse in this heat.) .As if that weren't enough, after lunch I walked into my coworker's office to return the (well-cleaned) bowl to him, and he immediately jumped up to give me a bag of - something - that his wife had sent for me. They were like small mangoes with a huge bean as the stem. I forgot what he called them (I really should learn how to remember unfamiliar words - my vocabulary might actually be shrinking), but he expained that you squeeze them into a container and add water and sugar for a fresco (fruit juice). .I'm not too fond of the half-sugar, half-water frescos they typically serve here, so I decided to be brave and acutally try a bite of the fruit. (This is a huge development in my life. I didn't cook with - or eat - onions and peppers until about a year ago. Mystery produce had no chance in hell.)

. Here are all six of the bean-topped mangoes.

Three of them make a much bigger portion that you would think. After my dinner (of a half a pound of beef - what?), I couldn't finish it all. Which is a bummer, 'cause it was good. So I gave it a go for my dessert. The verdict: the cutting texture is a little like roma tomatoes. About the same size, too. The meat has little seed-looking parts distributed evenly throughout, but no really noticeable seedy texture. The skin is softer than tomato skin, and totally edible (I hope ...).

And the flavor - it took a while to pin it down. Then I had it: grapes. The acidity was a bit surprising at first, but not when compared to chomping on some big, slightly sour grapes. Same aftertaste. But it's also a little peachy. Like a grape-peach. Greach? Nonetheless, super good.

And the moral of this story is: let's say this odd, socially-awkward, weird-dressing, English-butchering foreigner came to town. How many Americans would just totally give her super amazing fruit that she's never even heard of?

For some people, if something is hard to get and they want it bad enough, they’ll just spend the money and endure the inconvenience. For me, I just won’t stop until I find a cheaper and easier way of getting it.

Such was the case with my yogurt habit. I was having a hard time keeping up because: 1. the yogurt in my town consists of single-serving gelatinized sugar they euphemistically call yogurt (more accurately “yo-goor,” rhymes with door), 2. the nearest plain yogurt is at the grocery store two hours away – if there are no unforeseen “delays”; 3. I live in the desert and there’s no air conditioning on the buses; 4. the quart-sized containers are 35Q; and 5. I was going through more than one per week (as in I would buy four quarts for the month – which made my grocery haul even more fun – have none left two weeks later, and then either wallow in deprivation or head back out to the city, adding 50Q in transportation to the purchase price).

So I gave up and started drinking milk … psyche! Sick, never.

Actually I figured out that yogurt is just milk with some added bacteria who eat all the lactose to give it that firm pudding-y-deliciousness. All they need is to swim around in some warm milk for a few hours. Can’t be that hard, right?

Fijese que, “warm” means between 100 and 110 degrees, “bacteria” means special yogurt cultures, “a few hours” means you better put it in the fridge right when it gets firm because otherwise it’s inedibly sour (more on this below), and “milk” means not that chemically-enhanced, comes-in-an-unrefrigerated-box-with-a-year-long-expiration-period milk.

So I asked my mom for a yogurt maker (a.k.a. a keep-whatever’s-inside-warm-until-you-unplug-it machine), and within two weeks I was eating my own homemade yogurt. Actually it was homemade cream cheese because that first batch taught me the important lesson that the longer it’s in the machine the sour-er it gets. I learned that lesson only after excitedly gulping down a huge spoonful – after which I promptly Googled “yogurt too sour, wtf do I do now,” and the online homemade yogurt community had me covered (strain it and you get surprisingly tasty cream cheese – amazing!).

And that’s how I got my yogurt quarts down to 12Q (the price of a quart of boxed milk).

However, being the gastronomic perfectionist (picky eater) that I am, I still wasn’t satisfied. Something was off with the flavor, and it needed spoonfuls of sugar every time. After more Googling, I discovered the raw milk movement. Always quick on the uptake, I put two and two together – living in a semi-rural area, no raw milk prohibition laws, dodging herds as I walk around town – someone’s gotta have some raw milk around here.

I turned out my neighbor does. She happens to own several Jersey cows that she keeps just outside of town and she sells their still-warm milk from her house every morning. And it’s 1Q per cup.

Which brings the grand total of my yogurt quarts to 4Q each.

(Before you get too excited though; I actually have yet to make “raw milk yogurt.” I boil it. Sorry for the disappointment, raw milk movement. I still support your cause. Fight the power.) .Yummy, real yogurt with real strawberries..

And this is strawberry yogurt on its way to becoming strawberry cream cheese. Which later became strawberry cheesecake.

What still suprises me about life here is that it is just so amazing! Among my country, my assignment, my town, my co-workers, my fellow volunteers, the PC staff ... I am so happy with everything and everyone around me! Actually I sometimes find myself waiting for the bottom to drop out and the bad times to come (also I have yet to experience the 100-degree heat that's on the way ...), but for now, things are just awesome!

However, to present a "Fair and Balanced" look at life in the Peace Corps (in the spirit of my favorite news network), I have a confession: Not everything is good. And the other day, within a split second, the "bad" and the "ugly" joined forces to knock out just about all of the "good" that previously had been flowing in generous abundance.

Here's what happened:

I was walking my bike to the shed, thinking of nothing but the vast promise and possibilities of the awakening day ... when I saw it. The black blob in the driveway. My vision is pretty poor, so I always get to play this awesome "what could it be?" game as I approach odd-looking objects. At first I thought maybe it was a rotten orange peel (I have an orange tree) ... and maybe it had sprouted leg-looking spines ... that looked a lot like spider legs ... please don't let it be ... yep, they're definitely attached to a spider body. I froze. The bike fell. And I might have yelped.

A recovering arachnaphobic (there are just too many litte brown guys around to provoke the cortisol response anymore - and besides, they eat mosquitoes), I'm losing my childhood fears faster than Obama loses cabinet members. But, my God, this thing was the size of my hand.

It's one saving grace was that it was covered in ants. Actually I think they were building a new house inside it. At the very least, I knew it had to be dead.

... Until it moved. It actually used its back legs and pushed itself up a little bit. Twice.

That's when I got the camera. At least when my family received the news, they could have some idea as to what type of monster ate the flesh that for twenty-six years comfortably adorned my face. Honestly, how can you have ants marching around with the contents of your abdomen and still be moving?

Anyway, the moral of the story is that the freak of nature must have lived somewhere in or near my house. (Actually it probably could travel hundreds of miles with a few small children on its back, but why would it do that?) And I've seen the movie - I know they live in colonies. The only logical conclusion I feel confident to draw is that, just like Jeff Daniels (or was it John Goodman? I saw it when I was eight - thanks, Mom and Dad!), I'm living at the headquarters of about four million of them.

See the ants? See how tiny they are? These are regular-sized ants, yo.

I know, I can't believe I put my foot that close to it, either. P.S. Please y'all, don't crash the Travelocity site by all at once rushing out to buy your tickets to visit me.

A really cool thing about Peace Corps is that they take a lot of “generalists” and then try to mold them into something useful. A generalist would be someone with a Liberal Arts degree (like Philosophy - the most useful one of all) and no specific experience. All Volunteers start off as Trainees, and (at least in our case) the training staff does an excellent job preparing us for whatever we’re assigned to do.

For me personally, useless as my Philosophy degree is, I did come down here with a smidge of specific knowledge, gleaned through busting my butt in three years of law school (and a summer of bar exam study). Unfortunately, the average rural Guatemalan woman has precious little need for my expertise in, say, the North Carolina Statue of Frauds (that oral contract is gonna hook you for three years, dude).

Which is why I think it’s so cool that I can use (and hopefully enhance) all the other skills I’ve developed along the way. Like framing a rational, convincing argument. Or investigating all sides of an issue in order to analyze the best course of action. And of course, with my undergrad minor in Social and Economic Justice and the equivalent of a law school minor in Civil and Human Rights, I’m highly tuned into the social justice implications of pretty much everything. Which might explain why after about five minutes, conservatives tend to avoid me for the remainder of any social gatherings.

So, as to the work … I work in the Municipal Women’s Office in my town. My “counterpart” is the coordinator of the office, and it’s pretty much just us two. Our main goal is to increase the citizen participation of the women of the town (and the villages sprinkled around it that make up the town’s population), and female political empowerment in general. We also run the Women’s Clinic, a very low-cost gynecology/obstetrics operation, every Tuesday and Wednesday.

At the clinic, the patients get on the waiting list by showing up first thing in the morning, then waiting - sometimes all day - until their turn with the doctor. This leaves us with a bit of a “captive” audience, and we aprovechar (take advantage of) it by giving a series of charlas (talks) that will eventually cover a range of individual development topics like: health, personal finance, job skills/organization; emergency/risk management, and environmental issues. We plan to segue into meatier issues like: political participation, AIDS/family planning, violence against women, and human rights. Then we’re available throughout the day to talk with any of the women about anything they‘d like.

While these charlas will hopefully really empower some of the women on an individual level, the more sustainable side of our work is with local women’s groups. The mechanisms of local government include scant representation by women. Because village women are generally stuck at home caring for the house and children (and lacking transportation to the town seat), their voices often get lost. Our remedy is to form and support women’s groups in these villages; the idea being that a voice backed by twenty or thirty group members has more power.

For these women’s groups, we start with presentations on basic group dynamics, and project prioritization and planning; then get into individual development and women’s rights issues. We also offer specific trainings as they request them, and facilitate connections with organizations that offer particular skills courses. The main goal is to encourage and support them as they exercise their political rights.

International development studies indicate that, because women focus on projects that tend to benefit the community as a whole, development is much more balanced and sustainable when they participate fully. However, a certain degree of self-confidence and community support is necessary for women to feel safe enough to do so.

Unfortunately, Guatemala ranks high in gender-based violence (which inspires fear in every woman, even those personally unaffected) and ranks low in education of its girls. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I can’t change Guatemala’s machista (male chauvinist) culture (which devalues women), or its schools (which ignore families who pull out their girls early), or its legal system (which encourages impunity for all types of violence against women). But hopefully I can help the women of one rural Guatemalan town find each other, come together, and fight for their own vision of social justice. .

The set-up for International Day of No Violence Against Women. We invited representatives from PROPEVI, the national organization for the prevention of violence against women, to make an excellent presentation to the town's women (and a few men) about domestic violence. The center poster says: "No to the violence against women. Let's fight against the impunity." The left one says: "The violence against women is not normal, nor is it natural. We should condemn it." The right one says: "We support the women who suffer violence. We condemn it."(Poster-making skills are also highly valued in the Peace Corps. Just make sure you've got your grammar right before you bust out the permanent markers.)

A prominent feature of the Guatmalan town is the centrally-located Catholic church. (These were an integral part of Spain's "if you can't beat 'em, convert 'em" policy. Not unlike the modern-day role of McDonald's.) Along with the local church, the towns were bestowed with local patron saints. Every town has saint, and every saint has a day. And every town celebrates it's saint's day with a week- (or two or three) long town fair. (Often the saint's days of nearby towns fall within weeks of one another. This lucky coincidence enables easy relocation for the festivities-providers: the ride-equipment companies and ware-hawking carnies.) ..Narrowly averting the risk that Christmas wasn't going to be surreal enough for me (with no family in sight, 80-degree temperatures, blaring ranchero music, constant firecrackers ...), it happens to fall right in the middle of my town's annual fair. So I invited another volunteer (from the frigid West) to spend Christmas with me, soaking up my town's generous heat, sun, and of course, fair atmosphere! .The fair was surprisingly low-key, especially in light of on stories I've heard of the bolo- (drunk guy) saturated craziness that can encompass some town fairs (granted, we never stayed out past about 10pm). And I was quite impressed by the size and variety of the rides, games, and junk food stands ... my town has a pretty sweet fair! .But I still didn't actually "ride" any of the rides. Maybe next Christmas..

The (Manually-Powered) Pirate Ship

The (Manually-Powered) Ferris Wheel The (Name-Brand!) ZipperOh, the Zipper. I really did want to ride this one. It's like a little peice of the North Carolina State Fair stopped by to say hi! But I passed: it cost 10Q, my friend didn't really want to, and I quickly remembered that I broke my retainer on the Zipper in 9th grade after making the wise decision put it in my pocket (right along the hip joint where the bar holds you into the ride) "so it wouldn't break". My Christmas turned out really awesome, and having my friend here to visit made it perfect: we had a super fun time hanging out at the fair, watching movies, getting some sun for our post-Christmas surf trip, and exchanging gifts on Christmas morning! I was also stoked to try out on someone else the cooking skills I've been teaching myself - as in, is it because I'd be starving otherwise, or am I like, the best cook ever?

The Peace Corps Christmas Dinner - incomplete without: cheap plastic furniture, barely matching cooking and dining ware, and the ubiquitous water bottle (including my awesome new pink one - thanks, Mom!). And don't look too closely, but that's a Christmas tree there behind the presents. I promise. I cooked a lot (to rave reviews!) but for Christmas Eve dinner, I ordered a chicken from my counterpart's cousin. I heard she was going to kill some chickens early in the morning, stuff them with veggies and whatnot, and roast them all day long. Couldn't miss out. While delivery was somewhat delayed (but right on time by the Guatemalan clock), the chicken was well worth the wait and expense - super good and tons of leftovers.

I hope everyone at home had really awesome Christmases! I missed you a ton and can't wait for you to visit!

Yes, the serving dish is basically aluminum foil.

A little Peace Corps Guatemala tradition is for the current volunteers of each region to throw a regional "Welcome Party" get-together whenever a new group of trainees swears in (three times per year). Some regions are about three cycles behind, but the Oriente (East) was right on it!

The "wear some white" dress code proved too tricky for some ...Our Welcome Party fell right before Christmas, so they decided to make it a "Winter Wonderland" theme, complete with a "White Elephant" gift exchange. Everyone brought a gift (that may or may not have been desirable - for example, I bought a string of Christmas lights that flashed in time with the Christmas songs that blared from a little speaker attached to them) worth about 20Q. I never quite caught the details of the game, but it involved picking numbers out of a hat and stealing presents from each other.

Everyone happy with their gifts!Fun enough, but I believe the game to be an affront to all that the Christmas spirit encompasses. I also had, like, three gifts stolen from me.

More fun gifts (and an Abominable Snowman costume).

The money gift (of course): peanut butter.

When half of your house has no walls, you tend to rethink the concept of personal space. Like when the dog is all muddy, and you want to keep her out … and it’s too late. Or like when you’re sweeping the ever-present dust off the floor … and a breeze picks up.

Some things you learn to deal with: in a stroke of brilliance, one day I decided to set up my fan to blow in the direction that I was sweeping; I mop on really dry days so the paw prints don’t accumulate for at least a few hours; and I’m totally habituated to covering pretty much everything in the kitchen with little cloths and towels (I have no cabinets).

It's not all hardship, however. Instead of those creepy plastic trees, I get real tropical ones. I can sit on the ledge of my living room, pick an orange, and drop the seeds and peelings right into the yard. And I can't imagine laying in a hammock without the open air around you. .But one of the major perks to the lack of walls is free pets. Like geckos. Some people in the states actually pay for these things. And then they have to keep them in an aquarium and buy bugs for them to eat. And then clean that aquarium, yuck. .My little guys and I have a perfect relationship. We even eat dinner together. Apparently the light in my open-air dining room attracts the tastiest bugs around. My buddies hang out up in the gap between the ceiling and wall and scurry down to munch on the unfortuante ones who've stopped for a rest on the wall. It's better than TV - I should actually film them and narrate their little family dramas like those meerkats. .But best of all, they run and hide when I get remotely close to them. Cute does not imply cuddly. . This spot is all shadow without the camera flash: they're stalking their prey. .

There are three of them in this shot. The adventurous one by the light is also the biggest - lots more bugs there. Apparently he hasn't heard that risk-taking is so five months ago. Hi.

My first work Christmas party in Guatemala was this past Friday! About an hour before quittin’ time, we all met in the municipal “salon” (basketball gym in the muni building that’s used for everything from meetings to receptions to soccer games to big-screen soccer game screenings … but very, very rarely for basketball).

I had spent the better part of the morning designing gift tags for some sort of gift baskets, but I had no idea for whom the baskets were being made. So I just made the gift tags, wrote a happy little holiday message from the mayor, printed them out, and had an intern cut them up (because that’s how interns roll, worldwide).

When I walked into the salon, all seventy baskets were lined up on the concrete “bleachers,” and we were finding our seats at tables in the middle of the court. I put two and two together and realized the baskets were for us, the muni workers! The mayor gave a sweet little speech about how he uses the word “share” a lot, but it really is important especially for this time of year, and that our baskets were intended to be shared with our families. I felt so special; both because I was included with the muni workers, and because I had my host family with whom to share my basket! Then the mayor personally helped pass out the tamales and beers.

All I could make out with my ever-worsening post-law school eyesight were these huge three-liter Pepsi bottles popping out of the baskets. I began to wonder if there was anything in my basket that I wouldn't be sharing with my host family. But I truly was grateful to have an assortment of goodies to present to the family of five small children. Their take included:

Those previously-mentioned three-liters of high-fructose corn syrup

Multicolored (and flavored?) marshmallows

Incaparina (this corn-meal drink mix - very popular here)

Hot chocolate (in a bar form to be broken apart and put into hot water … it’s no Swiss Miss, people)

Chocolaty-malty-type balls

Assorted Christmas-style cookies

Tang-like stuff (pineapple flavor, yay!; but pineapples are one of the cheapest of the fruits here, and I’d rather just have the real thing)

Dried-fruit-and-herb-to-make-some-type-of-Tea stuff (which looked like it could be good, but I still figured the family would appreciate it more than I)

The whole basket.

I kept as my share:

Apples

Grapes (super expensive here; double the price of strawberries, and I only buy those like once a month)

Tomato sauce

And the basket itself (when everyday housekeeping tasks involve lots of manual labor, you can’t have too many plastic carrying apparati)

My share.

The grapes were such an awesome bonus, and I was especially stoked because it would be my first time eating grapes since arriving in the country. But this also led to a bit of beginner’s caution: due to really high contamination rates, all produce here must be cleaned much more thoroughly than in the states (where I eat apples right out of the grocery bag). The Peace Corps rule for eating fresh fruit is to rinse it, soak it for 15 minutes in bleach-laced water, and then rinse it again with purified water. I got to work right away.

The problem is that this is a tedious process, and sometimes you forget to do it, or you’re really hungry, or you just kind of get over it. Like the other day when a guy was selling strawberries for almost half the usual price, and I got really excited. He offered a tester and I just popped it in my mouth, right there in the market. I know, now you‘re wondering what extreme sports must also be into.

But the grapes were different. They were special. And I was going to clean them properly so I could enjoy every single bite, completely worry-free (and because they‘re one of the few fruits I do rinse before eating in the states). I pondered my game plan as I went about the cleaning: would I just arrange them all on a plate and eat them right up? Would I have two or three now, two or three later, and make them last a few days? Or would I freeze them and have a little grape-ity goodness whenever I wanted? So many possibilities … that 15 minutes seemed to take forever…

Until I woke up the next day and realized I had left them in the bleach water. For more like 15 hours. So now whoever it is who regularly rummages through the pile of eggshells and veggie tips around the corner of my house that I like to call “compost” (not laziness) is currently enjoying my sweet, sweet, bleach-flavored grapes.

You’re welcome. And the muni appreciates all your hard work this year.

I eat chicken. I eat beef. I eat pork - eww, but not bacon. I even eat fish (although in Guatemala, you don’t eat fish unless: 1. you witnessed it being hauled in from the ocean and you are personally grilling it up right there on the beach, or 2. your stomach acid is so strong it could neutralize even Anthrax).

Although I spent about 24 years of my life in North Carolina, a state which some deem, let‘s say … agricultural; I’ve never really been acquainted with the “animal” part of the meat I eat. I don’t even like it to resemble the animal - I’ve only bought those whole rotisserie chickens at times when I lived with a guy in the house who would pick off all the meat, put it on a plate (preferably separating the edible breast meat from the greasy whatever other meat comes on a chicken), and throw away the carcass before I ever had to look at it. (I also readily assume the risk that my having never even considered eating “wings” or “ribs” in my life might effect on my claim to American citizenship.)

The problem I’m having in Guatemala is that there is no Harris Teeter down the street selling those awesome pre-marinated chicken breasts where you just cut open the bag and slide it into the pan. Or those big bags of individually frozen chicken breasts - preferably without rib meat, yuck. And if there were, they would probably cost about half of my “living” allowance.

Instead, there are markets and tiendas (small, family-owned stores) with whole, dead chickens with their guts sliced open so you can see the line of progressively larger eggs that the chicken would have laid had it been allowed a mere five days more of life on Earth (assuming they lay an egg a day, who really knows these things?).

There are also carnicerias (butcher shops) with beef and pork. While I have yet to patronize these establishments (they smell like cold blood - or at least how I imagine cold blood to smell), I know exactly how fresh this meat is because there is a slaughterhouse about a block down my street. Actually “slaughterhouse” is a bit euphemistic; it’s rather a weedy lot with a cement slab, a hose, and a drain (headed for the river, just like all the other drains in town). It really complicates my 6am runs as I pass the dozen men going about the Monday, Wednesday, and Friday kills. I feel bad because the chuchos get to lurk around like hyenas while Luna can merely pine for the day that I accidentally set her collar just one notch bigger.

At first I tried avoiding the whole meat issue with Protemas - this dog-food-looking (and smelling) soy protein something - but it turns out you can undermine the integrity of pretty much any recipe by replacing the meat with little ground up pieces of sponge. And, while I admire and respect those who so choose, my lifestyle (meaning my craving of meat) simply does not accommodate vegetarianism.

So I sucked it up and bought some chicken. As advised, I asked for a pound “with breast.” Because apparently some people would like it without breast … for what, I don’t know. What I got looked as if they had cracked the thing’s rib cage in half and threw in its weird pointy arm - I’m guessing that’s the elusive “wing” - for good measure. The ribs were all bony and bloody and everything.

Then I spent a good part of the next hour hacking away at this segment of dead animal until I had two piles: one meat and the other skin and bones (and well, meat - because damn, it’s hard to get it all off! It’s like a crab, except one whose meat has been superglued to its shell and is all slimy and gross and you can feel the salmonella seeping into your pores …). Then I had to cut it all into small pieces so they would cook evenly with the tiny ones I was scraping off by the end. But the fajitas I made that night actually turned out really well (much better than the sponge-and-green-pepper-tortillas I had been previously calling "fajitas").

I’ve since learned that you can just cut off the big hunk of breast meat (which ends up looking like a store-bought chicken breast - imagine!), and then boil the rest of it, rendering the meat much more easy to pick off afterward. So apparently I could have eaten rotisserie chicken without male assistance. I hope none of my old boyfriends is reading this ….

That's the leftover 1/4 chicken, all boiled and prepared to be shredded into my personal black bean chicken chili recipe (invented because I had black beans, tomatoes, and chicken ... and not much else). You can tell this is my kitchen because my spices are in alphabetical order (in Spanish); and my salt and pepper shakers are filled with salt and garlic salt.

For everyone who was worried, I did have turkey on Thanksgiving! And I was surrounded by the people I love most in the entire country: my training group! We all got together at this awesome hostel in this tiny town on the beautiful Lake Atitlan, and had a chill, fun, and totally refreshing weekend together!

The dock at the hostel; Lake Atitlan is at a fairly high altitude, basically a super deep hole between volcanoes that happened to fill with water.

Sunrise right over this perfect little hole in the mountains!

Thanksgiving Dinner (which started at 3pm, how perfect!) - that's pumpkin pie you see there; not as good as my grandma's, but actually pretty close!

So, I am a proud member of the only gym in my little Guatemalan town. It’s unlike any gym I’ve ever attended in the United States, even that Gold’s Gym/Beyond Fitness/Peak Fitness (each incarnation saving it from the bad management of the previous) where I kept renewing year after year because it was just so cheap.

This one is more like a family’s second (and very nice) home next door, one whose three upstairs rooms happen to be filled with second-hand-looking American home-gym equipment.

The cardio room.

For weight training, there is an ancient bench that has rust-stained the piece of loose carpet underneath it, a slightly more modern one with those plastic-encased fairly light weights, and the motherlode: a pre-Bowflex cable system with a completely unadjustable seat.

All I needed to date the cable machine was its workout demonstration poster that I found folded up in the corner. It showcases a pale but muscular man with a half a bottle of gel in his spiked-up blonde hair, wearing an electric blue spaghetti-strap tank top that proudly showcases his nipples. His tight Adidas shorts hit about mid-thigh, and his socks rise a good four inches above his all-black Reebok high-tops. This company must have had a serious model search though, because the guy is still pretty attractive.

The view from the weight room.

Upon finding the gym, I loved it immediately and asked the owner what the hours were. Oddly, she responded, “when would you like to come?” I soon found out that I was the only member. But that only lasted a few weeks and when a group of teenagers showed up to join, I was really excited. Until I saw them trying to use the equipment. So now, along with Founding Member, I've also apparently become the Head Trainer.

The view from the cardio room.

The internet here is super bad, so it´s basically all I can do to post these photos of my dog and the morning runs we take together. Life here is awesome, I will post some details about it when I next come across some normal internet ...

A boot store called, conveniently, Pastores Boots.

This cute little town called Pastores, right outside Antigua, specializes in … cowboy boots. I’m generally not the boot-wearing type, as can attest those of you who have witnessed me trudging through the (½ inch of) North Carolina snow in flip-flops. But this town is literally world-renown for its boots, and I’m trying to sample all the touristy flavor around here for the benefit of my future visitors. And when I found out they’re super cheap -- between $40.00 and 60.00 (they tell me boots, not to mention handmade, master-crafted leather ones, cost a bit more than that in the States) -- I was so there.

My friend Reianna, sampling the local style. Also, Pastores boot-makers generally work right behind their shops, so it happens to be THE place for custom-made boots. Which was super-lucky for me, because I wasn’t looking for any “regular” boots that you might see “other people” wearing.

Yeah, is that paw really necessary? So, last Saturday was the boot festival (I actually can’t verify that it qualified as a “festival”; more like a few people gathered at the main street to cheer on some bike and road racers, randomly), so a few of us met down there and did some shopping, hoping to maybe catch a bargain.

Because your feet deserve only the best, uh, alligator and cobra …

These lucky guys made it in to the display case whole. However, I was more interested in designing my dream boots. And I did. And they were ready just in time for swear-in, which - incidentally - was earlier today. That was cool too. But I'll tell y'all about that in the next post.

Last week we met our “counterparts” and visited the sites where we’ll be living for the next twenty-four months! As secretive and drawn-out and frustrating as the site placement process was, everything worked out perfectly for me and I actually couldn't have picked a better site myself!

I can’t post the name of my town (and consequently neither my new address) because of security and other reasons, but it’s about two hours outside of Guatemala City, to the east, in a “dry tropical” climate -- meaning it gets super hot, but the hottest time of the year is also the driest. We’re approaching the coldest time of year, meaning it sometimes rains at night and I should keep a light blanket on hand, just in case.

It’s a small town, but has almost everything I’ll need on a daily or weekly basis. The tiendas (stores) sell almost all the food staples, and there’s a big market every Tuesday (but a couple of vegetable vendors who set up everyday). The capital of the department is about forty-five minutes away, and several big grocery stores there carry everything (and not just peanut butter: exotic foodstuffs like soy sauce, red wine vinegar, Splenda, etc.).

I’m replacing an awesome volunteer, so that alone brings a lot of perks. First, she had a great relationship with the muni, so I get to bank on all the goodwill she’s built up over her two years. But even better, she worked with the Municipal Planning Office (read: lots of men) and I’ll be working with the Municipal Women’s Office (read: awesome proactive women), so the pressure’s totally off as far as “filling her shoes.” So I get all the benefits without the expectations to be exactly like the "last volunteer."

My biggest inheritance, however, is her beautiful house! It’s half-indoor, half-outdoor-but-covered, with a fenced-in yard with actual grass, a real bathroom, Spanish-tile roofing (rather than hot, hot tin), a sweet German Shepherd named Luna, and about six different types of huge fruit trees! Like a lot of local housing set-ups, it shares the “compound” (block) with other houses owned by the same family: the sweet great-grandmother lives right next to me, with a mom, dad, and five kids across the street. The great-grandmother loves Luna and is going to be keeping her, but since we share the yard, I’ll be able to play with her and take her for runs whenever I want! I haven‘t taken any pictures yet, but I promise tons of them when I get it all set up with my stuff! In the meantime, I leave you with the following photos. To set up the scene: imagine walking down the street in a poor, dusty pueblo in Guatemala. Suddenly, you hear thumping Reggaeton music approaching; you look up to see a brand-new, sparkling Escalade with real spinners (nothing like plastic clip-ons) and windows as black as the paint job. You immediately know in what trade the owners of that car are involved: pinatas.

P.S. This post is sponsored by my dad, without whose gift of two sleeping bags -- one rated to 40 degrees F, and another liner that adds 12 degrees, for a grand total of life-preserving-protection from temperatures down to 28 degrees F -- I would never have survived the intolerable climate of the so-called “temperate” region in which they place trainees. And now I can pack them up and use them for actual camping. Like in a tent. When you're supposed to need a sleeping bag just to make it through the night.

Public transportation within Guatemala City is “off limits,” which didn’t matter for all the other Muni trainees, who were headed west last week. But the volunteer I was assigned to visit lived in the east, the mysterious “Oriente.” And all of the buses going east originate in the heart of Guatemala City.

So last Wednesday, I took a chicken bus to the outskirts and got off at the big shopping mall, Tikal Futura. From there, I called a Yellow Taxi (because the dozens of white taxis lined up there are not PC-approved) and paid the driver Q 55.00 for the twenty-minute ride to the “bus station” that was more like a bustling block with a dozen men trying to grab my bags and herd me into their buses. I held onto my bags and eventually found what I hoped was the correct bus, headed east. I shoved my big backpack on the top rack, kept my small backpack on my lap, and relaxed into my personal seat, with a headrest and the ability to recline a few inches! The air conditioning made my arms cold, but packing a sweater would have violated the “it’s hot here, bring summer clothes,” instructions I received.

Four hours and Q 40.00 later, the Pullman dropped me off at a department capital city, fairly close to my destination. I wandered a few blocks until I found a microbus headed toward the border, and handed my big backpack to the ayudante. As I squeezed in next to an Irish girl traveling Central America as a graduation present to herself, I realized I forgot to watch my backpack get strapped down. I hoped for the best.

I was reunited with my backpack about halfway there, when the micro stopped in front of some construction vehicles. We were instructed to get out and start walking across the rocks and mud that littered the highway, to board another micro on the other side. The Irish girl and I stuck together, wondering what made the few inches of mud impassable to the micro, when we saw the hole. More than half of the road was gone, just washed down into the jungle below. Among dozens of daily mudslides closing roads all over the country, this road collapse actually made the front page of the national news.

The hole in the road.

After eyeing the new ayudante tie down Irish girl’s backpack and my own, we made a u-turn and headed further east. It caused a little confusion that the two gringas weren’t traveling together (to the border where tourists cross to reach Copan, a popular ruins site in Honduras), and rather I was headed to a small municipality along the highway, but they stopped for me anyway.

The volunteer I visited is totally awesome. She has the best housing arrangement, cooks amazing food, and works with some really great people in her town. She took me to the local hot springs and we shopped in the brand-new and totally modern mall, which was ... surreal.

View from the volunteer’s rooftop deck/patio.

The Oriente was fabulous: warm (well, hot), friendly people, lots of things to do, more liberal dress, relaxed attitudes. I didn’t experience any apparent manifestations of the supposedly increased machismo, but I was in a small town (1300 people), so I can’t make any major generalizations.

The church in the center of town.Some of the trainees up in the western highlands described needing all of their clothes, long underwear, gloves, hats, and two sleeping bags to get to sleep during their visits. And some didn‘t shower the whole time because it was always too cold. I showered twice a day, turning off the hot water at night, to cool off a bit before relaxing under just a sheet during the comfortably cool evenings. Did I mention that I like the east?

The central park.

As part of our training, the director of the Muni Development Program, our technical trainer and two Spanish teachers brought the fourteen Muni trainees on a one-week tour to meet lots of Muni volunteers and visit six of their sites. We stayed in two different big cities: Huehuetenango (way-way-ten-on-go) and Quetzaltenango (kate-zoll-ten-on-go) -- both the capitals of departments (think: states) with the same names, ate lots of good food, and got to know each other a little bit better. The trip was both technically informative and super fun; and kind of an intro to the rush that will characterize these last few weeks of training. (We’re going on individual five-day visits to volunteers, then we find out our sites, then we visit our sites for a week, and then we pack up to move two weeks later, on November 1st!)

Street in Huehue; in this country, it is often bright sunny and super dark cloudy at the very same time.

The Munis we visited were all in the Highlands and within about two hours from our central locations, giving us the opportunity to see some really beautiful mountains on our daily treks out to them (sorry no photos, I was too busy trying not to puke all over the van). They varied from large, highly developed munis to small, barely-getting-started ones. Overall it offered a really good glimpse into the situations that might face us, and the types of projects we may be able to accomplish in each.

One of our hotels happened to double as a furniture store.

All of the volunteers at these munis were awesome people and each one had some concrete changes they could show us, along with lots of intangible personal relationship-building. It seems like a successful service combines the two with relative balance. The personal relationships are really important, in order to build the capacity of the local people; we’re supposed to resist the urge to invent and take over complicated projects, for the risk that they will come to a grinding halt once we leave.

We also learned a bit more about the volunteer cycle: ideally, each site receives three successive volunteers, for a total of six years. First-cycle volunteers tend to work on general organization, promoting internal and external communication (transparency) in the muni, and carving out a successful role for themselves. With luck, they might be able to launch a project or two, like one volunteer who helped the community do a very comprehensive “diagnostic,” where they visited each of the muni’s aldeas (villages) to gather information about population, public services, private enterprises, etc (with the idea that a community can serve its people a lot better once it knows who and where those people are).

A relief map of the department of Huehuetenango: the actual drive between these municipalities is a bit more dramatic than depicted here.

Second- and third-cycle volunteers (depending in part on the volunteer they replace) can jump more quickly into projects. A lot of the first-cycle volunteer’s time might be spent breaking ground for successive volunteers, which can be really frustrating if you’re trying to measure your progress.

We also each got an opportunity to chat with the director of our program, who will spend the next week placing the fourteen of us into twenty potential sites (some first-cycle and some replacements). We talked with him and the Country Director early on, so he had an idea of what we were looking for, but now we got to clarify our preferences after learning more about our program. Overall, ours is a really flexible group. We have two lawyers, two architects, and some people with GIS experience, but not a lot of really specialized experience otherwise. And as far as I know, no one is being really picky about their circumstances, which is good because he obviously can’t accommodate everyone, and I really believe he knows better than we do about where our skills might be the best match.

Our last hostel, in Xela (shay-lah) -- the local name for Quetzaltenango, which apparently is the go-to hostel for PC volunteers in the department. The nine muni girls shared this room with twenty-four beds crammed in it.

The main concern (especially for me) is climate: some sites are freezing cold (like my training site, but even colder!), and some are scorching hot. Both times I‘ve said: “I hate the cold” -- which I believe translates as “Please put me in a site which the gods have designated to be a reminder to infidels of the temperatures they will face in eternity.” Most of the hot sites are in “the oriente” (east), but some are at low points in the highlands (northwest). There are no sites at either of the coasts (justified by insufficient population density), nor “the Peten” (that rectangle-looking northern chunk of land next to Belize). As far as I can tell, the majority of volunteers from all programs are concentrated in the western highlands.

We met up with a ton of volunteers in town to watch the first Presidential Debate at a restaurant called Dos Tejanos (Two Texans). Coincidentally, we have two Texans in our training group, pictured here in front of (from left to right) the Guatemalan, Quetzaltenango Departmental, and Texan flags.

Our trip was limited to the highlands, so I only have rumors, hearsay, and Lonely Planet to conjure up an image of what it might be like in the east. “Wild West” is term people tend to throw around a lot, but I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean. Also, the population is mostly Ladino (as opposed to Indigenous, which I'm accustomed to in my training site), and there is supposed to be lots more machismo. Just when things were getting a little boring around here …

Partly to celebrate a birthday, and partly just to get together and hang out, eighteen of the trainees ventured the farthest west yet, to the Mayan ruins of Iximche (Eee-shim-chay). My training town is the closest, so we had an hour and a half on one bus, but some of the kids had a pretty grueling ride. Fortunately, the awesomeness of the day trumped any camioneta discomfort.

When we arrived in Tecpan, the closest town to the ruins, we hit up the local grocery store to pack lunches. I bought some sweet, sweet peach yogurt, a chocolate milk, and two Fuji apples (amoebas and bacteria have no defense against a good scrub on the pant leg, right?). I heard a nasty rumor that someone had received a huge jar of peanut butter from his host mom, so I stopped in a panaderia (bakery) to get a big, soft roll, in the event that generosity happened to strike the owner of said deliciousness.

After securing the requisite goodies, we haggled for a low-priced ride out to the ruins, about ten minutes away. There were fifteen of us at the time, too many for a microbus, so we had to scout out a pickup. They build these great railings around the truck beds to keep the bodies from falling out, and we dutifully herded ourselves in. It was intimate, but there were three more of us along for the ride back (and, oddly, we all got fresh red paint on our hands -- we concluded that the driver spent our initial fares on a can of spray paint rather than the brake fluid he more urgently needed). If my next two years of Guatemalan travel involved this awesome (and generally smell-free) group of co-trainees, the inevitable squishing together would be perfectly tolerable.

We picnicked right outside the ruins’ entrance, and after talking down the fee from Q50.00 to Q5.00 (our Peace Corps IDs proved we weren’t tourists), we ventured into the former capital of the mighty Kaqchikel tribe, to have a little looksee. Iximche is the first of many Mayan ruins I’ll be scoping on my search for the best ones to bring you crazy kids to see. While humble and unassuming, it offered a pretty sweet intro into the whole checking-out-Mayan-ruins thing.

Greeting the turf maintenance crew. Note on Peace Corps fashion: you wear what works. While not especially flattering, these pants inspire jealousy among my friends because they zip off into shorts. The first half of the day was really hot, and then when it cooled off as the clouds rolled in, I zipped my pants back on. I aprovecho (take advantage of) opportunities to look like a goofy tourist in any parts of the country where I don't live.

My friend David (who shared, like, five pounds of peanut butter with everyone) heading into what I like to call the “Quiddich” pit. The Maya often used this game to settle disputes -- without using hands, feet, or heads, one team would win the game by sending the rubber-like ball through a small circle posted high above the field (which strikes me as Harry Potter-style because the ball has to go through a tiny goal, and because it sounds ridiculously impossible). Oh, and after the game, they usually sacrificed the captain of the losing team.

For the record, this sign merely prohibits climbing on the structures.

And this is where anthropologists believe the ancient Maya did their yoga. Always a skeptic, I had to check it out for myself.

Park staff installed this particular structure for the sole purpose of reminding Peace Corps trainees that the bathroom situations at their host houses could be … worse.

Iximche was a perfect day: eating great food, getting great sun, chilling with great people, and listening to some great guitar.

Monday, 15 September, was Guatemalan Independence Day. All the decorations and preparations over the past few weeks had been making me a little nostalgic for 4th of July at home. After experiencing the revelry, however, I’m feeling so proud to be a citizen of a country that would send me to become a member of a Guatemalan community and to hopefully plant a few seeds of sustainable development. I’m so lucky to be here!

My host sister, Marta! She’s been working really hard!

My nemesis, the gallina (gai-yee-nah). I actually found out that all of the family’s 10 chickens (which, lucky for me incidentally, had been kept in a coop two blocks away) were stolen last week! This little one was roaming the street soon after, and they grabbed her to keep her safe until the owner claimed her, but no one has come yet. So I guess she’s the start-over to their brood. My contempt slowly wanes.

On Saturday, we had a Mayan ceremony at the training center. A Mayan holy woman asked the gods to welcome us to Guatemala and bless the work we will be doing, all the while narrating the meaning of each step to us. It was cool.

About to pour one out for the homies.

After the ceremony, a bunch of us headed to Antigua for overpriced lunches and beers. I had a fabulous meal of hummus and pita, fruit salad, and warm brownie with amazing homemade ice cream. It left me just enough money for two beers and my bus fare home, but it was totally worth it.

Even better, another trainee and I stopped to check out this little junction where I change buses whenever I go almost anywhere, and discovered my new Antigua alternative! There is a coffee shop with way decent espresso for almost half the Antigua price; a grocery store with Jif and four other brands of peanut butter (and Nutella!); cake shops; a pet store (with super cute puppies!); an electronics store; and a Domino’s (good just to know that in an emergency, there’s an American chain with food I’d actually eat.)

And I had a super great Sunday! I walked through town, visited my friend’s house, chatted with a local police officer (who was standing with two other officers behind this truck-full of spinach-looking greens -- it’s unfortunate, but delivery trucks generally have to be guarded with arms -- even produce, it seems), and later chatted with the priest (who was buying a two-liter of orange soda up by my house -- about six stores away from the church, with three sermons yet to give that day).

Then we did a little group “community analysis” project, where we congregated members of our host families and had them draw a map of the town and the spots that are important to them, and graphed their respective daily and seasonal schedules. When we do these things in our assigned sites, they’re supposed to help us organize community activities around places and times that will work best for the people. I can totally see it working well, and it’s cool that this slew of projects they’ve assigned us seem to be pretty meaningful.

After dinner, everyone congregated in the center of town to watch the Torcha, commemorating Independence Day Eve. The five local schools each competed in this huge relay race, running with lit torches all day long. They were followed by vans and camionetas, and they would trade in and out of the vehicles to keep the torch going.

I was with my host sisters, and it just kept getting colder and colder as the night went on (and it was late one -- I got home at 8:45!). They huddled around to keep me warm (they were fine of course), and I felt such a connection with my little community and my new Guatemalan friends and family.

So I was minding my own business, doing my Spanish homework at my desk with my back to my bedroom door. I usually get home around 5pm or so, and I relax and read and study until we eat dinner at about 7pm. I leave my door open to get some air and so my host sisters feel free to come and chat whenever.

Another woman and her daughter were visiting, so there was a lot of half-Spanish, half-Kaqchikel conversation going on outside my door. I was tuning it out, basically because I never pick up a word of it anyway. But I kept hearing this odd peeping sound, and it was getting louder.

Finally I turned around, and the ugliest, fluffy-pigeon-looking bird was timidly trotting around my tile floor. It was still close to the wide-open door, so I instinctively got up and began to walk toward it, thinking this strange wild bird would fly away at the sight of me.

No such luck. It pushed onward, bobbing its head with every awkward step. Like when you’re walking in the same path as an oncoming person, and you both try to get out of the way but keep turning toward the same alternate path, until you just laugh and one of you gives way -- this little creature was doing that! The closer I got to it, the more it tried to dodge me and get further into my room.

My feet clearly were not good enough to box it out, so I had to get my hands in on the action. Bad move. Apparently I had increased its determination, and it started to lunge at my hands with its ferocious little beak. Luckily my flip-flops were right by the door (I don’t wear shoes in my room because I do yoga on my floor at night) so I grabbed each one. Not a moment too soon: the bird went in for a few vicious bites.

By this point my host family and their guests noticed what was going on and had assembled around my door, laughing hysterically. The littlest sister managed to contain herself for a few moments, and casually stepped into my room and swooped up the bird. She laid it down gently in the courtyard, where it stood for a moment, twitching its head to look from side to side. Indifferent, it began to walk around the courtyard, bobbing its head in inspection for morsels.

I don’t know how to say “what the hell is that thing?” in Spanish, so I pretended to laugh along. They politely offered “excuse us” and “sorry about that,” but luckily they have Kaqchikel so I didn’t pick up anything that sounded like making fun of me. They finally informed me that it was a “chicken.” I’m no farmer, but since when is a chicken all salt-and-pepper dirty-looking and tiny?

I breathed a sigh of relief when my littlest host sister answered that no, it wasn’t her “chicken.” It must be the property of the guests, then, and they’ll be taking their adorable pet back to their house, where it belongs.

I didn’t notice the “chicken” for the rest of the night or the following morning, so when I got home the following afternoon, I had totally forgotten about it. Until I was again sitting at my desk, not bothering a soul, when I hear this terrifying “peep-peep, … peep.” I whisked around only to find those beady, soul-less eyes staring right into mine.

And the battle raged on.

My Host Family in one of their cornfields (not pictured: two more daughters, four sons, and the mom)

The Mayan Civilization spanned the entire area of Guatemala, south to Honduras, and north and east to Belize and the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Considering that it grew in relative isolation (other civilizations did populate the Americas, but not nearly to the extent as did those of Eurasia), its many advancements, including some not achieved in Eurasia until much later, are quite impressive.

The Mayan counting system is both binary and venticimal (based on the number twenty, rather than ten), and the calendar consists of twenty basic days that repeat indefinitely. Each series of twenty is unique, based on other permutations within the dates, up to a period of about fifty-two years. Each fifty-two year period is unique, based on the “long count,” of which the current one ends in 2012. The Maya, however, consider the end of an era to be simply the birth of another, better one. I know, whew!

From a philosophical standpoint, the Mayan belief system complements much that we know in modern atomic science, in the same way that Buddhism does. They believe that humans are a part of nature, and that nature influences everything in our lives. Energy forces in the universe affect our outcomes, thus the alignment of the universe at the time of birth basically determines your personal trajectory.

The Mayan calendar is so accurate that it requires a correction of only two hours for every 500 years. (Note that old Gregory gives us an entire extra day more or less every four years.) In a book about the calendar system that my Spanish teacher (who happens to study the philosophy of his indigenous Mayan peoples) brought to class, I looked up my birthday (and I spared you the Spanish):

Tijax (Tee-hash)

Fish. Flint, cutting object, suffering, day of medicine.

This is a very favorable day for curing and performing physical and psychological operations; to protect and defend from problems, slander, and suffering; to foresee and prevent them as well.

Whoever is born on this day was engendered in Tz’I. They are generally tireless fighters, helpers, leaders, and tend to seek solitude; they have the gift of curing and can become good athletes, doctors, and spiritual guides. They also have the tendency to suffer from gossip, disputes, sicknesses, and accidents.

It was all fun and games until I got to that last part. Like, who cares enough to gossip about me? And sicknesses and accidents? I had my “medical history” meeting with the PC nurse the other day, and she said, “so other than appendicitis when you were seven, you don’t really have any medical history.”

And disputes? That’s the least accurate of all. As if I ever argue with anyone. It’s not like I’m one of those lawyers or something.

Some of our training group, hanging out on this super fun rooftop bar.

Our next conquest: Volcan Agua (it's 3766 m compared to our first volcano, Pacaya, at 2552 m)

Today we had a “community exchange” between two training communities in different programs: Muni and Agriculture (Food Security). We went to the other community first, and they had a perfect presentation all set up for us. They used a really cute scavenger hunt (in Spanish) to show us around their town. One of the sites was this soccer field that you can only reach by climbing this really steep trail, which is basically a water trench. But then you reach the top, and this soccer field has just been carved into the side of the mountain. The dirt was sliding down the hill at the edges, but otherwise it was totally a proper field.

And then they made us banana pancakes! Maybe it was simply the fact that they weren’t fried, but it felt like those pancakes were the best food I’ve eaten since I got off the plane.

Volcan Agua -- under the clouds! And then we brought them here. Our presentation was a little less spectacular, but we did have the priest give them a behind-the-scenes tour of the church and the museo (museum) that houses old church artifacts. It’s really just a little room with all these great 400- and 300-year-old church artifacts under glass boxes. The church is actually pretty cool because it’s 404 years old, its walls are over a meter thick, and when they built some side doors into the walls, they excavated skeletons! Cooler yet, they installed a skeleton display right inside the cathedral with all Josephs, Marys, and Jesi.

The paintings on either side are over 200 years old!

Despues de (after) lunch, we took a little five-hour “walk” with the same host dad who took us up on the hill above our town the other weekend. This time, he had to bring his own father for his expertise among the hills. The “host dad” is thirty-one, a year younger than the trainee staying as his “guest son.” So his father could be anywhere from fifty to sixty or older. But this man could move.

All I knew about this walk was that I’d be home in about five hours, and we were going to see some sights of significance to the local Maya. Our guide led the way, in his rubber rain boots, and I tended to follow right behind him, in my high-tech Merrell hikers. Where my shoes gripped the rocks and dirt, he relied on years of expertise to balance and push ahead quite steadily.

We hiked through some of the most beautiful jungle I’ve seen. The forests are a little strange here in the highlands because they have both North American and tropical plants, so you see these exotic banana trees right next to towering pines.

We were treated to the traditional lore about all the various locations we passed. The hill named for the town (or is it vice versa?) contains two entrances, one enveloped in jungle and vines, and the other on a huge, out-of-place rock that juts out from the vegetation. If you happen to enter the hill, the richest of treasures awaits.

There are two ways to enter, either through a bout of incredible good fortune, or the offering of a sacrifice of a loved one. Apparently the latter option is more frequently utilized. Several nearby towns have achieved their wealth, which exceeds that of my town, through such sacrifices. Honorably, though, the patron saint of my town forbade its inhabitants from taking advantage of the blood money, and it therefore remains a poor and but loving little town.

That must be why I’m so happy here.

The courtyard at church, where the priest lives.

In a world such as ours, where lowly Peace Corps Trainees and Volunteers are strictly forbidden to own or drive cars or even ride as passengers on motorcycles, we tend to use a lot of public transportation. Luckily, you can get from almost anywhere in Guatemala, to almost anywhere in Guatemala, on camionetas -- chicken buses. I say almost anywhere because there are some villages that are just too remote, and you have to take a pickup, or even a horse or donkey, but in general, it’s chicken-busing it all the way.

Like I mentioned previously, these are retired US schoolbuses. (A lot of the cars here seem to be retirees, with a seeming local affinity for 1980s models. Some parking lots resemble scenes where Brat Pack members could have stood around smoking and coming of age.)

Chicken buses come in a variety of styles, from just-off-the-bus-route (the only alteration being the blacking-out of the state and school district names) to just-off-the-West-Coast-Customs-lot. There is a driver and an ayudante (helper) on each bus. Above the windshield, there is generally an announcement of the cities between which that particular bus runs, like “Antigua-Guatemala.” If you’re between the two, and need to head toward one of the announced cities, just hop on (either at a bus stop, or by waving your hand from any point on any road that the driver passes), and you’re off.

Eventually the ayudante makes his (never her) way down the aisle to collect money from the passengers. Note that only some of the passengers are new and have yet to pay, therefore the ayudante has to keep track. And sometimes this results in a free ride. But chicken-bus karma tends to ebb and flow, so you just appreciate your good fortune and hope it doesn’t result in a stinky, sweaty ride in the near future.

This is a private operation with little regulation, and basic economics teaches that when a driver goes back and forth all day long, he (never she) will make a lot more money with a lot more passengers. In some buses, the seats have been replaced with extra-long ones, which fit three slim Guatemalans fairly snugly. Anyone tall by American standards (or otherwise oversized) is a whole ‘nother story. (Did I mention that I’m tall here? And my feet are huge.) But even in regular two-seaters, every seat will have three people in it. Which makes for some interesting passing through of what’s left of the “aisle.”

There are cargo racks and long handlebars running along the roof on either side of the aisle. Of course handlebars tend to invite standing-room-only passengers. And just as you’re thinking: so, that “Maximum Capacity - 35 Students” is an outright lie … , the ayudante packs in a few more. For security, I generally try to wear my (small) backpack on either my back or chest for the whole ride. More than once, though, I’ve had to move deftly to shove it up on a rack to save it from death by crushing.

And the ayudante still has to collect the fares.

Pollo Campero (Farmer Chicken, aka Guatemalan KFC, but with the ubiquity of McDonalds in the US) -- Note the interesting selection of cars here. I’m pretty sure I would eat at an actual McDonalds before ever dining at this fine establishment. But I’ll definitely never be too good to patronize their bathrooms.

The Municipal Building - one year old!

My community is a really awesome place to train for these eleven weeks! It’s in the highlands, so it gets pretty cold at night, and down to almost freezing in the winter (meaning Northern Hemisphere winter). Which is summer here. Rainy season (May-November) is called invierno (winter) and sunny season (December-April) is called verano (summer) because of the Spanish conquistadores -- in the Mediterranean, it rains in the winter and is sunny in the summer. The municipality is less developed than that of other, larger communities, in that it doesn’t have a Municipal Development Council (COMUDE), where leaders from Community Development Councils (COCODES) meet, nor does it have a Municipal Women’s Office (OMM). And it only has four COCODES, groups that anyone can from to address the needs of a particular geographic population. But the Municipal Planning Office (OMP) has a really great guy in charge, who sees a lot of potential for the community while also recognizing its current limitations. I think he will be a really good resource for us as we navigate the local government system in general. They picked the most creative guy around to name the streets. The community is organized in regular blocks, with a Calle Prinicpal (Main Street) and an Avenida Principal (Main Avenue) crossing in the middle, and Primera, Segunda, Tercera ... (First, Second, Third) Calles or Avenidas radiating outward from each. Meaning, there are two Primera Calles and two Primera Avenidas, etc.

There aren´t very many cars, and they´re mainly concentrated on the Calle Principal, which becomes more of a carretera (highway) on either side of town. Hardly anyone in town owns a vehicle. Everyone walks. And when it rains, the little boys tie trash bags around like Superman capes. When they have to leave town for work or shopping or whatever, everyone takes either camionetas (retired US schoolbuses, usually pimped out with female names, female figures, and religious symbols - and called "chicken buses"), minibuses (vans with schoolbus seats installed), or pickup trucks (with wooden benches along the sides of the bed, with or without a denim or tarp covering). On most days, I see more public (really private, but whatever) transportation vehicles than personal ones.

Local Transportation - before the pimping

(remember, they don´t read english or have states here in Guatemala, and they definitely don´t have transportation for public schoolchildren)

There are about five internet cafes in town, and at least one little tienda on each block. People just take the front room of their houses and stock them with goods. Lots of them have ice cream but it´s all basically frozen whipped cream. They have no healthy snacks at all, so I´ve started taking a little bread or tortilla with peanut butter for my snacks (again, JIF to the rescue). I would love some fruit, but we´re supposed to scrub all the produce with soap and water, then soak it in chlorine-laced water for fifteen minutes, and maybe even peel it for good measure. Not worth it for an apple the size of a golf ball. The Courtyard of My House -

how appropriate is that towel hanging there?

There is the huge catholic church in the center of town, and several smaller ones just in case. Lucky for me, I have an evangelical church behind my house. Even luckier, I´m a super heavy sleeper. I actually woke up randomly at 2am last Saturday night, and the music was still pumping. Apparently the only place to party on Saturday nights (or take your pick from five other nights of the week) is at an evangelical church.

This was a totally gray day, but somehow these particular clouds picked up some sunset reflection.

And it was pretty. And I took a photo.

Note: Thanks so much to everyone emailing, making comments on here, and calling me! (Oh, yeah, did I mention that I have a cell phone here? Email me for my number! I´m trying to call people as I can, but I didn´t bring a phone number list with me, and there are only certain days I can use it cheaply - it´s complicated.) And super thanks to Jenny for sending me my first mail down here! Yesterday at "school," the rest of us were bummed that a few kids got packages from home, and then I saw my own personal piece of mail! Seriously, anything you all email or post really brightens my days! Thanks!

Final note: the little boy playing Street Fighter with his friend on the computer next to me just got up from his seat, stopped at the open door of the internet cafe, threw his empty lollipop stick in the street, and then returned to pounding the keys in haphazard attempts to beat up his friend.

Waiting for the bus and watching a beautiful sunrise.At 4:50am Sunday morning, the four of us from my training town headed off to join about fourteen of the other trainees in Antigua at 6:00am to climb Volcan Pacaya. The volcano is just over an hour’s drive from Antigua, and we had reserved what my guidebook calls a “bargain-basement” trip, complete with a Peace Corps discount.

Vocan PacayaWe rode out in a fairly nice tourist van along with about ten other young-ish travelers. The van trudged about halfway up the mountain through tiny clusters of houses on a dirt road. Upon arrival at the equivalent of base camp (a little building with bathrooms and a snack bar stocked with a surprising variety of American candy bars), the van was surrounded by children yelling “steeek!” and shoving sturdy, cleaned-up tree branches at us.

View of three other volcanoes from the trail on PacayaOther children crowded around -- and ended up following the group for the first twenty minutes up -- on horses, with the occasional offer of “taxi, taxi?” Luckily none in our group actually needed a “taxi,” because the horses could only go along the dirt trail that ended about two-thirds up. From that point on, it was shades of black: jagged volcanic rock that ranged from loose, sand-like, slide-all-the-way-down-if-you-slip rocks; to beautiful, recently formed, break-through-if-you-step-in-the-wrong-spot rocks.

We trudged higher and higher, at times feeling like I was climbing the huge dunes at Jockey’s Ridge on the Outer Banks, with my feet sliding halfway back on every step. We precariously passed other groups on their way down, with their passing backpacks threatening to push us off the narrow, shifty ledges. I’m sure all of my running around the hills of my community helped me push ahead with the first of the group, but the altitude stills seems to get to me. Some of the group fell a bit behind.

Everyone made it eventually, and it was definitely worth every heaving step. Molten lava flowed right in front of our eyes. It was excruciatingly hot, even though we had been chilly from the clouds around us. There wasn’t so much a crater, rather beautiful ripples of hard lava built up with a little river of lava flowing from the center. The lava moved dramatically slowly and when someone would shove their “steeek” into it, they could only make a small indention.

After running around to check out the several sources of lava, we finally got down to business. My friend’s host dad suggested that we bring a bag of “angelitos” (little angels) to roast on the lava. In Antigua in the morning, another trainee said she was looking for some marshmallows and had brought Chiky’s, these little cookies with chocolate coating on one side, to make S’mores! I told her we had a whole bag, and I stoked up on some more Chiky’s, so we could treat everyone.

My friend had picked up a long, thinner stick along the walk, and rather than roast them right above the lava flow, where it was too hot to stand for more than half a minute, he poked the mallow-laden stick into a crack above the “active” area. He would pull out the stick almost immediately, with all four or five marshmallows toasted perfectly. We handed out pairs of the Chiky's to everyone, and some people had S’mores for the first time ever!

Note: this post is sponsored by my mom, who on a shopping spree to REI, bought me: the awesome hiking boots that I wore for the first time on this volcano climb; the zip-off pants that kept me comfortable around the hot lava-ness; and the purple raincoat that shoves into a tiny bag that kept me dry when the rain set in on our way back down the mountain and as we ventured through Antigua to the awesome Q 11.00 sandwich shop and the grocery store for Q 50.00 peanut butter.

I kept hearing I would be eating nothing but black beans and corn tortillas. However, while the slap-slap-slap of torteando (tortilla-ing) rises out of the kitchen along with the consistent smoke, I’ve actually been eating a wide variety of main dishes. One delicious marinara-like sauce, made from mini tomatoes, tends to accompany a lot of dishes. It was decidedly more interesting one morning when my host sister gave me a bowl with two hard-boiled eggs rolling around in it. Last week I got really excited when my host mom asked me if I like panqueques (pancakes). A few days later, an odd, state-fair-like smell wafted into my bedroom. True to state-fair form, I was served something resembling fried pancakes, drizzled with honey. It was no fried Twinkie, but it certainly would have impressed a few North Carolinians I know. I also eat a lot of leaf soups. They just take the leaves off the vegetable plants, sometimes along with the stalks, and cook them up. Usually they’re like spinach, but a bit tougher. Its about the only fiber I’m getting, besides the occasional bean dish, so I’m not complaining about it at all. They’re always flavored really well, and with a good sopping up, it makes the bland tortillas much more palatable. On average, I would say most of the dishes are about 40% salt. It’s great for me because I drink a lot of water here, just like I did at home, so I think I tend to crave salt a little more than average. It also means that when we do have chicken noodle or beef stew, it tastes like Campbell’s. Mmm, mmm, good. Pass it down. For protein, the meals tend to be feast or famine. I’ll have a Ramen-like noodle dish (which, because of the salt, tastes exactly like Ramen) for breakfast, leaf soup for lunch, and vegetable soup for dinner. As muscle atrophy begins to set in the following morning, they’ll magically present me with two fried eggs bathing in a layer of bean soup. And alas, I find the strength to walk to class that morning. I’m actually keeping a really good workout schedule here: I wake up at about 5:30, workout at 6:00, shower at 7:00 and go to class around 8:00 every morning. We eat dinner around 7:00 pm, then I get ready for bed and do a yoga video every night around 8:00 pm. I’ve stayed up past 9:00 pm exactly twice. For the morning workouts, the size of my bedroom is nicely conducive to kickboxing videos, and I’ve been running with my training site mates several mornings per week. The elevation and huge hills make running a bigger challenge than at home, but I’ve got to train for climbing all these volcanoes somehow! I’m still having a ton of fun here, and a lot of the adjustments are becoming second nature now. The hardest part is having to depend on others for my food and laundry and warm water for my bucket shower … but I’m getting used to it (scoring a jar of JIF helped immeasurably -- as does our classmates’ daily “investigation” into where they serve the highest quality ice cream). All of the dependence is really necessary for me to be able to navigate life here on my own once I move to my permanent site. The following photos represent the progressively increasing distances above the city that we climbed on Sunday afternoon with the host dad of one of my training site mates.

So I finally got to go to the city that’s going to be everyone’s first stop when you come visit me! (Quick note on making trips down here: it’s supposed to be the full swing of the rainy season right now, and the weather is beautiful! It’s sunny every day, with maybe an hour of rain in the afternoon or overnight -- the photo above was taken at about 5pm!)

According to Lonely Planet, Antigua is “fantasyland -- what the country would look like if the Scandiavians came in and took over for a couple of years.” And it’s true. Also, it seems to have been designed for the specific purpose of causing foreigners to hemorrhage quetzales (the currency here). We’re getting about Q800 per month right now, and I spent Q175.00 (about $24.00) of it on name-brand bath products and JIF peanut butter. I could have eaten half of that jar last night.

But other than the wonderful, wonderful grocery store (that carries real underwear and bras, too), there are actually some really nice artisan crafts at the huge, shaded market. Be prepared to bargain; some of the kids I was with were paying less than half what the vendor originally offered. For the top-end goods, you can shop along the street of jewelry stores and galleries closer to the center of town. There ended up being close to twenty of the trainees in Antigua on Saturday, and we headed to one of the supposedly affordable restaurants for lunch. A surprisingly small number of us balked at the prices and then spent another half hour under the burning sun, trotting through the city until we found the elusive “sandwich shop.” For the price of a sandwich at the first place (Q45.00/$6.00), I got a hunk of super good chicken on its own mini loaf of bread, and three Gallos (Guatemalan Budweiser -- they weren‘t all for me, some kids didn’t bring enough money with them). Apparently this shop is the go-to for the Peace Corps set, and I’m stoked we found it on the first day. Of course I have no idea where it was, but I’ll make sure to memorize it before any of you arrive!

During training, we’re only allowed to make day trips and we have to be home before dark, so I didn’t do any of the shopping or museum-checking-out that I really wanted to, but I’m pretty sure there is a ton of cool stuff to do in the city. There are also several really close mountains and volcanoes to climb, so Antigua would make a great home-base for some adventures. And there are ruins nearby.

After a super relaxing weekend, this week should be really exciting: we have training as the whole group of thirty (Ag and Muni’s) on Monday, my training group of four is set to meet the mayor of our town on Wednesday, and the Muni trainees are visiting a current volunteer on Thursday!

I’m still having a blast here, loving my host family (I’m going to teach my host-sisters kickboxing today!) and my little town, and definitely loving that there are only an hour and three buses between me and sweet, sweet JIF.

I’m in the first of my eleven weeks of training to become a Municipal Development Advisor. Training consists of a ton of Spanish classes, especially for the first half, and lots of work for technical training.

The thirteen other Muni trainees and I have been divided into four groups based on Spanish ability, and they moved us into separate communities, bringing us all back together once or twice a week. I’ll be working with the three other trainees in the local municipal office here in my community. Everyone here calls this office the “muni,” and it’s right in the center of town, next to the cutest little park and the huge Catholic church. It’s a beautiful, one-year-old building, and I’m really excited to check it out and meet the mayor next week!

They finally told us what we’ll be doing at our local muni, and I’m totally back in school with putting all the project due dates in my planner and blocking out time to do the work. Hopefully the Sam’s Club box of highlighters I brought will suffice to color-code my planner for two years. In my luggage, all the space that everyone else filled up with American snacks was otherwise occupied with: two-years’ worth of Precise-V5 Extra Fine pens, multicolored mini post-its, tape-roll white-out, and of course planner pages (that I have to print myself because none of the commercial ones are perfect).

We’ll be doing a community analysis, with community mapping and reports of daily and seasonal calendars for different sectors of the local population. We will make several presentations on various topics to our fellow trainees, a local high school, and two separate community groups, one within and the other outside our town. At the end of October, just before we’re sworn in as volunteers, we’ll present a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis to our local muni.

All of these together, along with ongoing cross-cultural training and Spanish classes, and simply living among the people, are supposed to prepare us to head into our assigned sites at the first of November and spend the next two years getting something done there. I’m really looking forward to jumping into these projects and getting a more realistic perspective on what I might be able to accomplish, but otherwise I’m just super stoked to be here! I’m having a blast learning all about Guatemala and its people and its beauty and its problems, that even though I have to adapt a lot of my behaviors so as not to be “culturally insensitive,” I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world right now!

Except maybe a parallel Guatemala where they actually eat fruits and vegetables instead of blend them with a pound of sugar or cook out every last microscopic nutrient.

Pictures below; feel free to skip ahead!

I’ve been in Guatemala for one week now, and I absolutely love it! On Saturday, I moved in with the family who will host me for the 11 weeks of training. I´m in a small city at about 7,000 feet altitude and about an hour from the capital, Guatemala City. In four bedrooms, there are the mother and father, six daughters, two sons, and occasionally some cousins. One of the rooms is mine, per Peace Corps regulations, so the rest of the family shares three bedrooms!

The bedrooms are all in a row on one side of a dirt courtyard. They have regular walls and doors, and tile floors. No heat, but it’s been hovering around 45-50 degrees at night so far. I’ve been sleeping under my 40-degree rated sleeping bag with a thermal outfit, and have been nice and toasty.

Across the courtyard are the kitchen, storage room, “pila,” and bathroom facilities. The kitchen has a dirt floor and cinderblock walls, and the family builds a fire atop a stone table in the corner, with no chiminey. They precariously place cooking facilities atop the fire, and toast up tortillas all day long. I’ve been eating really good and really varied dishes, with an emphasis on lots of white carbohydrates.

The “pila” is the wash station. It’s a cement sink with a cement shallow area off to each side. To wash my hands, I scoop up a plastic bowl of water, place it in one of the shallow side areas, soap up, and then rinse in that same bowl. Then I dump the bowl in the shallow area, never back into the middle sink part.

The bathroom facilities consist of three stalls: one is the shower and the other two are for toilets. The shower is cold, and for warm water I take a “bucket” shower. There is a large tub that the mother fills with a 5-gallon bucket of steaming water, right off the stove, and then mixes cold water with it until there is a big lukewarm tubfull. Like the pila, I use a smaller plastic bowl to dump that warm water all over myself until I´ve rinsed off all the shampoo and soap. It only seems complicated; I’m already a pro.

The best part about the “bathroom” is that the walls are cinderblock with fabric curtains instead of doors. You can’t really knock on them, so the family has hung cardboard signs that say “ocupado” or “desocupado” on either side. Genius.

Spanish classes and techical training are coming along really well, and I´m really excited to start "working" here in my training community. I will work with the three other trainees here on small projects that prepare us for solo work in our placement sites, where we´ll move in November.

It feels like I´ve been here for way longer than just a week! All the time there are a million different things to learn and see and do; I can´t wait for everyone to come down here and visit me! This is such a beautiful country, and most importantly, the American dollar is still worth something here!

This is the classroom where we have spanish class! It´s in a "secret" garden in the middle of town, and it´s so nice having outdoor class when it´s sunny, and when it rains on the tin roof above the classroom!

This is the view from the hill above my city. The city has about 10,000 people, and they´re the friendliest people in the world. Most of them are of indigenous descent, and they speak both Spanish and Kaqchikel, the local Mayan language. I´m learning a little, but it´s really hard to learn both at the same time!

This is why you have to dodge the mud in the street.

I just finished "staging" in DC, and now I'm in Miami with the 29 other trainees in my Guatemala group, waiting to get on the plane soon and start our training in Guatemala this afternoon! These kids are all super cool, and I'm really happy to be around such a fun group. About 10 of the 30 are in my program, Municipal Development, and the rest are in Sustainable Agriculture. We'll spend the next 3 days together in orientation training, and then split off into smaller groups for Spanish and technical training.

I gave up my cell phone a few days ago, so anyone who's called recently, so sorry I missed you! I'll check out the Guatemalan cell phone issue soon, and keep you updated. Also, there is a new address for my time in training (3 months), but any mail sent to the old address in Guatemala City should be forwarded to the new address pretty readily:

Quinn White, PTC

3rd Calle 6-48, Zona 1

Santa Lucia Milpas Altas, Sacatepequez

Guatemala, Centro America

telefone: 502-2384-3800

(add the telephone number for any packages)

I won't have internet or phone access for about a week, they say, so I should have a ton to update on whenever I get some access!

Thanks to everyone for the well-wishes and super fun going-away parties and dinners! I'm going to miss you so much! I love you all, and can't wait to get my new home ready for you to come visit!