As a healthy schools volunteer I thought it would that World Hand Washing Day would be a wonderful opportunity to do a fun activity with the children about why we wash our hands and how we wash our hands. Unfortunately, the school year finished two weeks ago and none of the children are in school. My host sister, who is a third grade teacher, and I talked about what we could do to celebrate and incorporate kids outside of the school environment. We decided to have an activity day at my house with the kids from the neighborhood.

On Saturday morning eleven of the neighborhood children, aged four to ten, showed up at my house and we started with an ice breaker game in which each child had to say their name, their age and their favorite food. We segued from food into the conversation of washing our hands and why we wash our hands. My host sister did a wonderful presentation with them reading the story of Mariquita Cochinita with them. Afterwards we did a question and answer with them asking them questions like, How do you think Mariquita felt when she was sick? and the kids were very enthusiastic about the activity.

Afterwards I brought out water and soap and taught each of the kids how to wash our hands before we eat and after we go do the bathroom. We played music from the radio for one minute so that they could get used to how long they needed to wash their hands for. They had a lot of fun dancing around my porch singing as they washed their hands. The third activity we did was a drawing activity. Each child had a sheet of paper with their name on it that said Lin Ka’ba Lain _______, Ut Lain Nin Ch’aaj Lin Ruuq. That translates from Q’eqchi Mayan to My Name Is ____, and I Wash My Hands. They got to trace their hand onto the paper and color the sheets however they wanted to.

Afterwards we washed our hands again, a few of our older kids were really excited and even recruited some of the other kids from the neighborhood and showed them how to wash their hands. Afterwards everyone got to choose between pineapple or mango slices for a snack and got to take home their new handwashing poster. It was a small project but the kids really enjoyed it.

Tarantulas are not a normal part of most people’s day. I do not have a normal life. As such I’ve been forced to deal with palm sized arachnids for the last 20 months. I’ve developed what I would like to call The Five Stages of Arachnid Cohabitation. Stage 1: Discovery and Absolute Horror There were about six blissful weeks when I first moved to Chisec when I saw no tarantulas. Sure, there were other large spiders but nothing as grotesque as a real live tarantula. Then, one day, I was cooking in the kitchen. I keep my spice jars in a basket next to the stove and I reached into the basket to get some curry powder. As my fingertips grazed the prickly fibers I panicked. Potatoes and chicken went flying as I accidentally knocked the frying pan off the stove and watched as my houseguest ran for cover behind the kitchen table. I was in shock. Had I really seen a tarantula? Was this some sort of nightmare? Was John Goodman going to come busting in through my door to save me? No. This was real. Goodman wasn’t coming and I had to take care of the spider myself. Stage 2: Minor Fascination After the initial shock wore off I developed a bit of a minor fascination with the tarantulas. I never went so far as to touch them, but after trapping one in the kitchen and escorting him outside with the broom I took some really cool pictures. Despite being creepy, they’re actually really interesting creatures. I Goggled tarantulas in Central America and it appears as though my new roommate is not in fact poisonous. Stage 3: Acceptance I actually came to accept that tarantulas were a part of my life in Chisec and while always a bit annoyed by their presence I usually just swept them outside or used the broom handle to scare them back into their hiding spots in the eaves of my house. Stage 4: Surprise Attack Only after I’d been lulled into a false sense of security did the tarantulas launch their full-scale attack on me. My brother Alex came to visit and we were packing to head up to the Tikal ruins. I dug up my running shoes and as I was about to put my foot in I noticed a rather large spider web in the shoe. A tarantula had moved in. I panicked; drop kicked the shoe outside and yelled for my brother. Alex spent the next ten minutes trying to get the tarantula out of my shoe. It’d hidden himself deep in the toe of the shoe and efforts to beat it out weren’t working. Alex suggested just squishing it in there but I didn’t want to ruin my shoes. I ended up taking my hiking boots (after a thorough inspection) up on the trip rather than the running shoes. The story doesn’t end there though. The little shit managed to ruin my shoe and my week even after he was gone. A few days after I came home I put my running shoes on to work out. I checked my shoes thoroughly for spiders and hesitantly put them on. I thought I was good, but shortly after my work out my foot began to itch like crazy. Turns out tarantulas shed their hairs when they are frightened and the beating we had given it had turned the inside of my shoe into a formidable spider hairball. The rash on my foot took over a week to go away. Stage 5: Mission to Kill As my rash faded away, my anger bubbled up inside of me. I was on a mission to brutally kill every tarantula I faced. I’d had to throw out my shoes since there was no way of removing the hairs. One evening I caught a tarantula strolling across my kitchen floor. I trapped it under the colander that I use as a sort of tarantula jail and put him outside while I took a shower and contemplated how to destroy the creature. I have no idea if this was the same tarantula that ruined my shoe but in my blind rage all tarantulas were guilty of causing the evil rash on my foot While in the shower I kind of chickened out. What if he could shoot his hairs at me and they stung my eyeballs and blinded me? Was this a smart idea to launch an attack on the spider on his home turf, two hours from the nearest hospital? I planned to release the spider but Peluche, the dog, had a better idea. While I’d been showering he’d discovered the tarantula underneath the colander outside. Best. Toy. Ever. The dog proceeded to scoot the colander around the porch trying to get the tarantula out and when he finally knocked it over and the tarantula went running for the bushes Peluche hunted him down. For the next hour he mercilessly tossed the arachnid up and down in the air and pawed at it as it tried to run away. In short, he mauled the spider to death. Peluche is now my favorite animal. Sorry Sasha.

So I've decided that since I don't have enough crazy stuff to deal with up here in the jungle, that I'm going to attempt to tackle the LSAT. (this seemed much cooler when i was going to be taking it in Guatemala City, but now turns out ill just be one of a billion people taking it back in California since the LSAT decided to axe Guatemala off the list of places they offer the test)

Here is a list of reasons why preparing for the LSAT in Guatemala is actually a good idea.

* It's a really good distraction from facebook.

* Justifies me spending 300Q a month on high speed internet (for my online review course...)

* Helps me remember how to speak/read/write in English.

* Gives me an excuse for staying in site on the weekends and thus not breaking the Peace Corps travel rules.

* Provides a forum for interaction with other Americans (and a few Canadians) that I am otherwise deprived of since the two volunteers closest to me are gone. One got kicked out and the other quit.

* Forces me to have a schedule that does not go like this. Wake up. Facebook. Go to School. Nap in Hammock. Facebook. Eat. Nap some more in the Hammock. Facebook. Eat again. Facebook. Go to bed.

I take the test Oct. 9th at Cal State East Bay. Definitely ready to knock this one out, my hammock misses me.

Why im in need of a vacation... My mom called me yesterday from the airport in San Diego, she and my dad have been down there attending the APA conference. Anyhow she told me that she felt just like me then went on to describe how she hadn’t changed her clothes in several days, she was stuck wearing flip flops because she couldn’t find shoes, she needed a pedicure so badly she was embarrassed to face the Vietnamese girls at For Your Nails and that her hair was so frizzy she looked like she'd gone back to her student days at Berkeley. At first I was kind of insulted, although assaults on my general state of cleanliness are nothing new, she used to tell me I looked like a homeless person when id come home from college with baskets of dirty laundry wearing sweats and old tie-dyed t-shirts. Then I took a look at myself and decided, shes probably right. Most of my clothes smell like mold, I’ve developed a bad case of what we refer to as “country foot” and I can’t find my razor so I haven’t shaved my legs in a month. Heres a good visual comparison…

Hurley from Lost /Me

also, tony just told me a look like a contestant on survivor...not what you want to hear from your boyfriend.

UPDATE:

ok maybe tony had a point...

Scary dude from Survivor/Me

Ok, so one more animal story.

I woke up this morning and there was a new dog in the yard. Im going to attempt not to get attached to this dog because the last two dogs I liked mysteriously disappeared and the one dog I can't stand won't leave. Anyhow. New dog is barking and barking and barking so I go outside to see what New dog is barking at. Well, apparently he doesn't like that the pig in the yard is tied up to the mango tree and he's decided to let the pig know this by getting really close to him and barking. The pig can't do anything about it because its tied to the mango tree, although I don't think the pig knows it should be annoyed at New dog. Also, New dog kind of looks a lot like this really pathetic cat my brother used to have named Jack.

Sasha, my dog back home would definitely bark if she came across a pig tied to a mango tree. Although unlike New dog I'm sure she would be much more composed even when facing porcine threats. She's jewish and all some. I haven't uploaded a picture of New dog and the pig yet, but heres one of Sasha.

UPDATE: ok so i uploaded the picture of New dog and the Pig...I really wish I had a picture of Jack too.

Amusing/Funny/Unusual Things that I’ve Seen Animals Do In Guatemala

1. I was sitting on the bus the other day and I looked out the window and there was a pig, a really big pig, like 20 pounds of bacon worth, chasing a duck across a soccer field. 2. Walking into town one day there was this stray dog passed out on the side of the road and sitting on top of him was a duck. 3. This one never fails to amuse me. Entire truckloads of Guatemalans will erupt into laughter when they see this. So when dogs have doggie sex, sometimes they get stuck together, and when the male dog tries to dismount he usually ends up spinning around so they are stuck together, ass to ass. Then, if they are in the middle of the street and a car is approaching they try to run away but they’re headed in opposite directions so they don’t get anywhere. It may be one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.

Staying Healthy in Rural Guatemala Alright, so there have been no shortages of fad diets to hit the US over the last decades. South beach, grape fruit, vegan, low carb (the crazy idea that eating bacon, fried eggs and cheese together was healthy if you omitted the toast) and other crazy things like the crazy celebrity maple syrup/cayenne pepper stuff. As we’ve learned, diets are not the keys to long term weigh loss success and aiming to change your life style and diet is the key to getting in shape and staying healthy. Well that’s all great when you’ve got Trader Joes, Berkeley Bowl, Whole Foods and more yoga studios and hip climbing gyms around than you could possibly attend, but what do you do when none of that is around? Well if you’re me, you sit around for a couple of months swinging in the hammock and not worrying about the tortilla belly forming around your middle because really, what does it matter what you look like in the jungle when you don’t even own a mirror. Well, after several months of being constantly sick and feeling like crap, I’ve revived and decided that its time to get out of the hammock and start doing something. Easier said than done. I cannot just hop in my car and head over to the YMCA. Its not even really safe for me to go running around my site by myself, and really its too hot to do that anyways. (Yeah I won’t pretend, I wouldn’t run even if it was an option). So with no running, no pool and no gym what is a girl to do. This is where podcasts come into play. I’ve been able to download Fit For Duty, a military issued series of work out videos available for free on iTunes. Pilates, step work, aerobics, circuit training, etc. It’s amazing. I can jump around in my little house with the fan on and get a pretty good work out. I’ve also got a Spanish language Bollywood dance video that I’ve been working on. Tony keeps trying to get me to turn on the webcam when I do it so he can make fun of me, but I’ve got to get my hip shaking down before I go viral with my kick ass moves. I’m still missing swimming laps, I’m a water baby at heart, but I’m getting use to this kind of work out and definitely feeling much better now that my three month stint with amoebas, giardia, the flu and every other disease known to man is over. I've even got an old basketball that I throw against the wall to get my angst out. Not quite like polo practice but definitely therapeutic.

Just gotta make sure I check my shoes for scorpions and spiders before I put them on! (Alex found a tarantula in my shoe when he was here!!!)

So the airport finally opened and Tony was able to make it down safely. We spent most of our time in Chisec so I could finish up some projects before the two week school break. I'm in the middle of a bunch of big construction planning so lots of trying to motivate teachers, parents and masons as well as trying to find money for all these projects. ( US AID where is all this money you promised?) Tony came to school with me one day and the Q'eqchi women had a great time trying to figure out if he was a giant Guatemalan or an American. I wish we could have spent more time traveling around but unfortunately I don't have enough vacation days left to do that (saving them up for my 2 week trip back home in August). We did get to go down to Lanquin and had a wonderful time doing the candle lit cave tour and swimming in the pools up in Semuc Champey.Nothing better than a man cleaning your room

Parent meeting in Pecajba

Waiting for a the bus in Lanquin

I've got my brother here now and Alex and I are heading off to Flores to go see the Mayan ruins before we head down to Antigua for the all volunteer conference and 4th of July party (which our country director decided to hold on the 3rd not the 4th, who knew she had enough power to move our independence day...)

Here's whats happening in Guatemala:

A tropical depression, that I will be referring to as "Shit Storm" has hit Guatemala. First the volcano erupted and now we're set to get hit by some nasty tropcal rain for at least the next 10 days. Peace Corps has us on lockdown on our sites and I really need to go to Coban to buy some cinnamon toast crunch. The airport is currently closed and if Tony can't make it down next week because of volcanic ash on the runway I'm leaving...when the airport reopens that is.

Maybe the Mayans were right, 2012 is coming. (actually my guatemalan friends were joking about this at lunch yesterday).

UPDATE:

So it got a little bit too wet and I'm now unofficially on lock down until at least Tuesday in Tactic at my friend Kate's house with Jareau and Kelsey. Scrabble and Trivia Pursuit for the next three days. Also, the airport is scheduled to be closed until at least thursday so they can remove the volcanic ash-turned-cement from all the water from the tropical storm. Tony and I are frantically trying to figure out what to do so that he can still get down here.

So, a few weeks ago I was walking down the street towards the bus stop to head to work. I saw a bunch of people waiting for the buses and was not anxious to join them for a cramped spot on one of the few buses going towards my school. A bus comes, all the guatemalans get excited because it looks pretty empty, but it doesnt stop. Instead, someone leans out the window and yells my name. Turns out that a group of the tourism volunteers were coming up for a trip to the tubing site near my house. I ditched work, jumped in the van with them and spent the afternoon hanging out in the caves of Candelaria Campo Santo with the new eco vols and a few of our alta veterans.

From the Mirriam-Webster Dictionary:

Main Entry: pla·gia·rize Pronunciation: ˈplā-jə-ˌrīz also -jē-ə-Function: verbInflected Form(s): pla·gia·rized; pla·gia·riz·ingEtymology: plagiaryDate: 1716transitive verb: to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own : use (another's production) without crediting the sourceintransitive verb: to commit literary theft : present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source

I thought plagiarism ended once we'd graduated from school. Apparently its been around long enough to have earned its own dictionary entry in 1716, so I stand corrected. After two cases of people stealing my writings and publishing them as their own I've decided that I'm going to password protect my blog. Some say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, I say thats bullshit. Do your own work.

If you want the password to my blog you can email me at RebeccaDreyfuss@gmail.com for it. I'll leave it unprotected for another couple of weeks so people have a chance to read this post. Thanks to all of you who have been keeping up with me, I promise more interesting blog posts are soon to come!

Alright, I've got a pila full of dirty dishes that need washing (which I can now wash at night because Mario installed electricity in the back half of my house!!!) so I'm not going to go into too much detail right now, but I had an absolutely amazing last 2 weeks of vacation. My parent's came down and spent a few days in Antigua with me before we headed up to Playa del Carmen in Mexico and then Tony came and visited. A few photos, more to follow later!

Happy Birthday to my fabulous parents! I love you guys!

So in exactly 5 days my parents are coming to visit me in Guatemala and then we're heading up to Playa del Maya for a little vacation in Mexico. A sort of big birthday celebration for all three of us. Can't wait!!

So its UV water purification day with my kiddies out in aldea Pecajba

basicallyclean empty bottles + water + sun + 24 hours = more creative ways to reuse plastic bottles and clean drinking water.

poco a poco we're cleaning up the environment and improving rural health

Photos to follow!

So I live in the middle of the jungle (seriously 600 square miles with less than 200,000 inhabitants in over 200 villages) but on occasion, my little Tigo wireless modem will pick up a signal fast enough that I can video skype. Its pretty much the most amazing thing...well id say since sliced bread but its even better since sliced bread has yet to come to Chisec. Anyhow, if any of you are on Skype and wanna chat hit me up!

Alright, so its been awhile and while I’m sure that no one is complaining (does anyone even read this anymore) I figure that someday I’ll look back at my Peace Corps experience and think, what did I do in 2010? So for posterities sake… here’s what’s been happening since I returned from an absolutely wonderful Christmas vacation in Lake Tahoe and San Francisco. (view from my porch)Chisec, while normally a very tranquilo place decided to spice it up a bit and a few campesinos were lynched, some fighting ensued over land and an elementary school was burned. The gente threatened to run the police out of town after torching two of their cars, but that didn’t happen so aside from a few traffic delays, a little bit of gossip in the market and a few concerned calls from the Peace Corps safety and security director, nothing really changed in my daily routine.Teacher protests have delayed the start of the school year in several departments in Guatemala, (perhaps they’ve been watching the news on the UC and CSU protests in California). Classes should have started at the end of January but some of my healthy school coworkers find themselves with empty classrooms and no work. Fortuately (or unfortunately depending on your political perspectives) the teachers of Chisec are working. I actually got the nerve up to ask a few of them why they were showing up for work. Turns out the school district supervisor told them that if they didn’t teach that he’d find someone else who would (again, no political comment on this, I’m just happy that the kids are getting an education and that I’ve got work to do).Healthy Habits!

I want to be able to carry stuff on my head like these women

Q'eqchi women working in their Tienda, thats a baby shes carring by her head...

Chisec from the front seat of the mirco.

So I’m almost half way through my Peace Corps service (march ’09-march ’11) actually a bit over half way through my entire time here in Guatemala counting the first three months in training. My friend Dave described the first 15 months as a lot like being pushed off the edge of a pool into the water and having to learn to swim in order to survive. Sink or swim, I guess. I definitely did a lot of sinking in the beginning but my head is finally above water and I’m really enjoying the experience now. I’ve gotten bossy enough with the bus drivers that I no longer end up shoved in the back with the chickens and old Guatemalan men falling asleep on me. They actually have started saving the front seat of the micro for me now. The cat calling has mostly stopped, I thought this was because the guys got bored of whistling at the gringa, but turns out that someone started a rumor that I’d gone home and gotten married to my big scary American boyfriend over Christmas and that he was gonna come down and beat up anyone that hit on me. (I’m just gonna roll with that one). Work in the schools is going very well. Despite some rough beginnings last year with the two school district supervisors, they’ve proven to me that they are really interested in the health of the villagers and I have a lot of confidence that they will continue to support the Healthy Schools program after I leave. Three of my four schools are very motivated this year, it’s the last year in the 4 year Healthy Schools program and they are working very hard towards getting their certification at the end of this school year or early next school year before I finish my service. Its an uphill battle for sure, we need to build a kitchen at one school, latrines and a stove at a second and a water tank at the third but the communities are behind the projects and the teachers are working hard to finish their grant applications so I am confident that we can accomplish the goals we’ve set out for the year. The last three months have really given me an appreciation for the Guatemalans that I live and work with. There have been some wonderful break through moments both professionally and personally in the community and I have to say I am loving my time here in Chisec. (my teachers working hard during our training on project design and management)More to follow later in the week, I still wanna update y’all on a lot of new projects I've been working on :)Also count down to the quarter century of me celebration:Bruce and Dorian's arrival: 18 days!Vacation to Mexico: 22 days! (also my 25th birthday)Tony comes to visit: 27 days!

So I got a new computer and I've been having way too much fun with the photo booth program. This is what boredom has brought me too.

A year in…

              A year ago I boarded a plane in San Francisco to begin my 27 months in Guatemala. I couldn’t explain exactly why I was joining the Peace Corps. I offered up vague answers about wanting to make a difference, live abroad, the same carbon copy reasons given in everyone’s application essays. I didn’t know how to say that it just felt like the right thing to do. Now, after spending a year living and working with rural villagers, I still can’t give any more of an explanation other than it just feels…right. As a teenager, I remember asking my dad what we were supposed to do with our lives. I think I was looking for a concrete answer, a plan, an agenda, but what he gave me was so much more. He said, we’re here to do as much good as possible, as little harm as possible and to have as much fun as possible doing it. There are highs and lows here in Guatemala, success is rare and failure is a daily occurrence, but that’s life and I’m here, trying to have as much fun as possible, living it.             Regardless of the motivation driving each volunteer here in Guatemala, we are all trying to make a difference. There’s no award for best volunteer of the year; success isn’t so easily quantified. While it would be simple to count the number of construction projects completed, classrooms built, or speeches given, how do you measure the amount of confidence given to a child? There is no way to add up the lives we’ve improved and there’s also no way of looking into the future and seeing what kind of impact we’ve made. Development workers around the globe all face the problem of not just trying to do the right thing, but to do things right. It’s evident that our hearts are in the right place, but it’s also easy to get carried away and even the best intentions don’t always yield positive change.             Working in Guatemala, I constantly find myself having to reassess my goals, change plans, steer a bit off the course of action I had set for the communities I help. I’ve learned I am not the star of this show. It’s not easy and for those of you familiar with my headstrong, stubborn way of banging through life in the bull in a china shop kind of way, you can imagine how humbling of an experience this has been. I’ve slowed down a bit because Guatemala has taught me that real change takes time, an idea that is both incredibly frustrating and incredibly relieving. All the rain catching systems, all the water tanks, the stoves, the latrines won’t be finished at the end of my service here and that’s alright. Development work is about sustainability, and the first steps of that are educating people on how to change their lives for the better and showing them how to lead their communities towards positive development. The lives people lead here are not easy. Poverty is rampant and its estimated that over 80% of the children in Alta Verapaz are malnourished. This means they are starting off life at a major disadvantage, and it’s easy to look at their situation and call it hopeless, but these kids prove otherwise. Their energy and enthusiasm for learning, for starting projects in the schools and helping each other has shown me they are the light in these villages, and through them, change can come. It’s our job and our responsibility as members of the global community to help in whatever way we can to empower the leaders of the next generation.             So as I lay here in bed, under my mosquito net, I can hear the music from the church across the street.  Inside there are people praying – for safety, for love, for work, for the sick, the dying, and the newly born. Some pray in thanks, others in desperation, but all in hope, and whether the well-worn grooves in the pews are a familiar resting place or not, the one thing we all share is hope. Maybe this is what growing up is supposed to feel like: the realization that nothing can stay the same but as long as we keep moving forward together we’ll be ok. The year has brought incredible sadness with the loss of loved ones but I’ve learned that the human heart is resilient. As people have left my life, I find myself holding on tighter to those I care about and through both the strength of the old familiar relationships in my life and the energy of new ones, I’m now finally seeing how much the world has to offer.        

So heres my 2009 Book Awards, based off of the 33 books I've read so far this year. The complete list is printed on the right side of my blog.

Best re-read:East of Eden, John Steinbeck.   I read this for the first time in high school and it is a constant topic of conversation between my best friend Katie and I. Steinbeck’s hopeful account of the human condition holds its place in my top 5 favorite books of all time. Timshel, baby.   "And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected."

Honorable Mention: The Things They Carried -Tim O'Brien    Best non-fiction: Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson      Mortenson was robbed of this years Nobel Peace Prize. While Obama continues to send troops into the Middle East, touting the importance of war before peace, Mortenson has taken a more radical approach towards the war on terrorism, education. He is creating a future filled with opportunities rather than dispair for the children of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. "You can hand out condoms, drop bombs, build roads, or put in electricity, but until the girls are educated a society won’t change." "I've learned that terror doesn't happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us. It happens because children aren't being offered a bright enough future that they have a reason to choose life over death."  Honorable Mention: Tender at the Bone -Ruth Reichl   Book that makes me feel homesick: The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan  Also a re-read from high school. Tan’s collection of short stories explores strong mother- daughter relationships, love, family and understanding of the past. Set in the foggy hills of San Francisco, she leaves me teary eyed and wanting to snuggle up on the couch at home with my mother. "Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever."   Guilty Pleasure: The Twilight Series, Stephanie Meyer    Four truly horrible works of literature, but this is the guilty pleasure category and I enjoyed this vampire sci-fi fantasy series of relationships between the dead and the undead bordering on pre-teen pornography. Personally I’m more of the werewolf type, team Jacob all the way.

 Honorable Mention: The Sex Lives of Cannibals -J. Maarten Troost

Biggest Disappointment: The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz   I expected the winner of the Pulitzer to offer more than just footnotes, Spanish lenguaje de la calle and poor character development. There were some chapters in Oscar Wao that I did enjoy but overall it left me feeling as though Diaz’s new style and edgy language were simple a cover for a lackluster plot and over stereotyped characters.  

Biggest Surprise: Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides   Recommended to me by several people, I’ve been anxious to read this book for a while. Eugenides takes a story filled with incest taboos, pre-teen sexual exploration and the difficult coming of age of a pseudo male hermaphrodite and creates a story of love and pain, growth and family, and grief and hope, that is remarkably relatable to all. He shows us that normal only exists in fairy tales and that it’s our differences that bring us together in this shared experience of life.   "Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. "  Honorable Mention: The Time Travelers Wife - Audrey Niggenegger

Book of the Year: The Cider House Rules – John Irving  Irving’s tale of Homer Wells and the St. Cloud’s orphanage guides the reader through such an array of emotions you finish feeling that all the compassion, the love, the wit, the hate, the anger and the confusion of this characters is somehow a part of you. One of the most sincere novels I’ve read and by far my favorite of 2009. "“Here in St. Cloud’s,” Dr. Larch wrote, “ I have been given the choice of playing God or leaving practically everything up to chance. It is my experience that practically everything is left up to chance much of the time; men who believe in good and evil, and who believe that good should win, should watch for those moments when it is possible to play God – we should seize those moments. There won’t be may”"Honorable Mention: East of Eden, John Steinbeck

I’ve been in Guatemala for almost a year now and the new class of Healthy Schools volunteers are receiving their invitations and preparing for their January departure. I’ve got a few emails from people asking about packing tips for Guatemala, so here it goes. Guatemala is a very geographically diverse country. Some volunteers live in the mountains at altitudes about 9,000 ft. Temperatures can drop below freezing and with no in door heating, fleeces, flannels and down sleeping bags are a must. I’ve got friend whose pilas (large basins used to store water during the week) freeze during the night, and they’ve sent home for warmer pajamas, thicker socks and hats and gloves. I spent the last week in Antigua, and a major cold front came in. The temperatures didn’t get above 50 all day and there’s no heat at the training center so be prepared to be bundled up even  in the classroom.  Out of the 180 or so volunteers in Guatemala, around 170 would tell you leave your flip flops, tank tops and sundresses at home, its too cold to get a tan. However, I spent most of the months of April, May, June and July wishing that it was culturally appropriate to wear a bikini to work. I live in arguably the hottest site in Guatemala. It’s a constant joke at the training center that the volunteers in Chisec don’t know how to pack for trips out of Alta Verapaz because I never show up with enough clothing (this was also a problem of mine back in California). Temperatures here range from about 75-110 year round. Its so humid that any thick cottons will mold before they dry and everything picks up this warm jungle smell. The only long pants I’ve worn in site are my white linen pants because they protect my legs from bugs and sun, and even those get too hot sometimes. I rarely wear anything with sleeves and I don’t even know what happened to all my socks (I haven’t pulled them out to wear since basketball season ended in June). While I own several pairs of shoes, great hiking boots, running shoes, business casual flats, I only wear my rainbow sandals in site unless I’m working out. I’ve yet to see a Q’eqchi woman wear closed toed shoes and really I could probably get away with not wearing shoes at all. Men tend to wear rain boots or cowboy boots all year round, but they make up for the amount of coverage on their feet by rarely wearing shirts. One of the returned volunteers from Chisec decided he was going to go an entire month without wearing a shirt to see if anyone notice. He was disappointed to find that people simply assumed he’d finally “gone native”.  A few weeks ago I took most of my clothes into Coban to get washed and dried (no dryers in Chisec). I left everything at a friends house in San Cristobal so that they don’t get ruined by the mold up here. I guess the best bit of advice I can give is  don’t pack anything you aren’t willing to part with after your service. Hand washing, harsh soaps and the weather wear away your clothes here much faster than in the U.S.   I’m off to wash my pillow cases (all my bedding molded while I was away for the week)  

So just because we're living in remote villages in the middle of the jungle does not mean Peace Corps volunteers don't celebrate American holidays. In fact, many PCVs spend months planning, designing and sewing costumes. The volunteers in Alta Verapaz (the best volunteers in Guatemala) throw an annual Halloween party and this year the theme was  super heroes and super villians.

Amy and Becca do Guatemala

Church in PanajachelAmzo in the boatSanta Cruz la LagunaLago Atitlan and the volcanoA room with a viewCatching some z'sposingour attempt to spell out KT, missing our other best friendsurprise?View from the mountains above Santa CruzAmy reading upRelaxingGuatemalan man on the boatHammock styleLake sidelunch.Road down to San MarcosLots of love.

Love them or hate them, life is full of sharing rooms, houses, and leftovers with roommates. I’ve had a lot of roommates in the past, some I’ve loved, others I’ve been less than enthusiastic about and life here in Guatemala is no different. Now Peace Corps policy prohibits us from cohabiting with other Peace Corps volunteers, something about not integrating with society kind of deal, although personally I think Guatemalans find it quite bizarre that I’m not living with my family or at least friends. I think some even generally feel sorry for my solitary home life, which may explain the frequent early morning visits from several of my male teachers. (that or my habit of doing yoga at 6am in just shorts and a sports bra). Someone must have put an ad up on craiglist advertising my house. Possibly something along the lines of:

Gringa seeks roommates in her cozy two bedroom hut to aid in further integration into jungle lifestyle.

Recent responses to the alleged ad have included, scorpions, tarantulas, this horrendous arachnid known as a tailless whip scorpion which is neither scorpion nor spider, toads, mice, iguanas, ants, mosquitoes and the neighbors dog (he came running into my house a few nights ago dragging not just the chain they use to tie him up with but the entire tree branch he was tied to). And just like roommates they eat my food, keep me up late at night and steal my stuff. The dog ran off with one of my shower sandals earlier today, I took off after him but the little mutt is fast.

Generally my roommates are annoying but I deal. Its easier to gently relocate the tarantulas outside then clean up the hairy squished mess and I even caught one of the scorpions (hes living in an empty peanut butter jar). The tailless whip scorpion has escaped my attempts at smashing him with a boot so many times that I’ve decided to adopt the motto “walk softly and carry a big stick”.  If my life were a reality show it would be called Survivor: Guatemalan Jungles, life in a giant terrarium…lets just say I'm glad I sleep underneath a mosquito net.

Would you want this living in your shower?Tailless whip scorpion

Chris and some guatemalan boysnew roommatemike and chris bbqing in tacticmike and michellelorba and her meatthe famous arch in antiguaantigua churches

salto(waterfall) and chrisantigua with Volcan Agua in the backgroundcarrying a loadthe parrot that lives in the yardcuevas candelaria campo santoChris's house (where ive been living until he comes back in Oct)

About a month ago Chris and I were headed to Coban to watch a big soccer game. About an 45 minutes into the two hour ride all traffic stopped, and for a road that rarely sees more than two or three cars in the same mile stretch, it was crazy seeing about a hundred cars backed up. Everyone got out, and after arguing with the driver about getting a refund on half of our fare, we followed the crowd and started walking. Turns out heavy rains turned the hillside to heavy mud and in the middle of the night a huge plot of a corn field fell. We had to walk about 300 yards through mud below the highway with all of our stuff to get to the other side. Chris was wearing boots so he had no problem, but I was in my rainbows (as usual) and ended up hiking in my bare feet. Here are some pics Chris took of the mudslide and my me trying to clean off my feet....

So food is in a major shortage down here because, well aid isn't reaching the needy and theres a major draught.   (Its barely rained at all in the last month and this is supposed to be the height of the rainey season) The poor indigenous people can't afford to keep the food they grow and they have to sell their beans and eggs instead of giving them to their kids. People are malnourished because all they can afford is tortillas and while they dont really look like the starving African babies you see on television and in new articles because they're full of corn, they  are really sick and struggle to survive and sometimes fall asleep on eachother/me on the buses.

What this translates to is that food prices are skyrocketing. Tomatoes cost 2 Quetzales/lb in March and they now cost 5Q/lb. There are no reason for the price increase other than the food crisis (no seasonal factors) but for whatever reason apples are dirt cheap, probably because they have such a short season and also because Guatemalans seem opposed to anything that you can't fry or serve in a bag.

So what does this all mean, it means that I can buy a pound of apples for 2Q (8.4Q=$1). So today I was like alright im gonna by some apples, but they arent all pretty and groomed like the ones in the states (did you know their are federal regulations in the US of A about what produce has to look like, ie no funny looking carrots, lopsided apples, etc) so I didnt want to just eat the apples plain, with bruises and potential ameobas so I decided to cook them. I peeled, cored and cubed the apples and threw them in a pot with some water, some sugar, a  ton of cinnamon and let them boil. I passed out in the hammock and 30 minutes later woke up, turned the stove off and smashed up the apples into their gooey goodness.  Tastes just like apple pie filling.

But not to make light of a very serious problem, Healthy Schools volunteers, myself included, have been hosting special community meetings to parents, teachers, women's groups and other social organizations to stress the importance of proper nutrition and cost saving ways to provide food for not just children but all those going hungry. And while the problem is much more deeply routed than  spending habits and lack of education, we are doing what we can.

Below are a few links to articles about this crisis in Guatemala.

Economist:http://www.economist.com/world/americas/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14313735&source=hptextfeature

CNN:http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/09/09/guatemala.calamity/index.html

Meet Mark and Adrian, my two best friends. Someone in Peace Corps played a cruel trick on the three of us and put us all in different states. Mark lives in the north west in Huehuetenango, Adrian is more central in Totonicipan, and I'm out in the east in Alta Verapaz. Despite the distance we stay in touch daily.  I love these boys. 

just a few photos of life in chisecjr. high students out in sepalau

scorpiansPROST!Mayan children at the riverdirt roads and thunder clouds

Top 5 Misconceptions about my Peace Corps Service.

5. I’m on a mission from God to convert the heathens. Evangelical Judaism, really?

4. My horrible boyfriend at home won’t marry me so I’ve runaway to hide my shame.

3. My family hates me and banished me to the rural jungle of northern Guatemala.

2. I am looking for a husband. A very popular school of thought among the young men of Chisec.

1. I’m a draft dodger hiding from the American Government.

As children my brothers had this book Fossils Tell of Long Ago. They absolutely loved it. Every night my dad would read the book out loud and my older brother Justin memorized it from beginning to end. I hated this book. I loathed sitting there listening about dead dinosaurs and mud and gross boy things. Once, I even threw the book away in hopes that I would never have to hear it again. My brother angrily collected it from the bottom of the trash can, and I still get teased about it. Despite my dislike for paleontology, I did adore reading. My grammar school friends and I used to compete over who could finish the entire American Girls series first and I spent many nights tucked under the covers with a flashlight reading about Laurel Ingles Wilder and fanaticizing about living in my own little house on the prairie. Throughout high school and college I read passionately, finishing my summer reading list long before labor day and borrowing books from my mothers extensive personal library.

The Peace Corps center here in Guatemala has its own lending library, tucked in behind the computer lab, there are shelves of books with heavily worn pages, scrawled with notes inside front covers from well wishers back in the states, I hope this inspires you to accomplish all you can I’m so proud of you, Love Mom in Ghandi’s biography, I know you didn’t read any of the books in your English 101 class, maybe you’re old enough now to appreciate the education I paid for - Dad, inside The Grapes of Wrath. One can only imagine what amorous prose has been sketched inside the pages of My Love My Viking and the various other novels in the rather large romance section. There is no official check out policy on books however its generally considered to be rude to take more than you’ll read in the next couple of weeks and stealing the entire Twilight series may result in being blacklisted by all other volunteers. The best time to go to the library is when a group of volunteers is finishing there service. Normally all the books they’ve borrowed and had mailed to them during their service end up on the shelves.

Unfortunately, I live nine hours from the training center and have yet to make it back since I moved into my site over two months ago. There used to be a Peace Corps outpost up here in Coban with medical supplies and a small library for the volunteers in the Vera Paces. Federally mandated budget cuts forced the closure of the office a year ago and all the books were returned to the training center. Thank you President Bush. That being said my site mate Chris and I both brought several books with us and have kept ourselves busy swapping copies of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for the first half of War and Peace (the book was cut in half several years ago by volunteers who agreed it was selfish for any one person to have the entire book at once). Unofficial waiting lists are established for books and locating a copy of a certain book is as easy as sending out a mass facebook message.

I’ve done a lot of reading here in Guatemala. I’ve put up a list of the novels I’ve finished in my five months here. Without television or high speed internet reading has become both a stress reliever and an escape back into the English speaking world. If you feel inspired, send down a copy of your favorite book. It will live a long life here, passed from volunteer to volunteer and cheering us up and making us feel a little more at home when times get tough.

Tortillas are a way of life here in Guatemala. The exact diameter and thickness vary across the country, tortillas in more urban areas tend to be smaller and more delicate whereas the tortillas in the more mountainous regions are thicker and tougher. Tortillas vary in color depending on the type of corn used, most are white however there are also yellow and black tortillas. The taste is considerably better than any corn tortillas I have found in California. Every meal is served with a small basket of tortillas and much like French bread at an Italian restaurant in the states there are unlimited refills. Unlike in the states though, the consumption of large amounts of this carbohydrate is not frowned upon. No one will judge you for “filling up on tortillas” before your meal is served. No Atkins diet here, these men mean business. Acceptable ways of getting more tortillas at dinner include franticly waving your empty basket in the air, yelling across the room or making a rapid series of clicking noises at any passing female. I enjoy eating tortillas. I’ve yet to get sick of them and even find myself waking with cravings for the toasty goodness. I usually only eat them once a day, and I usually eat about three of them. By Guatemalan standards I am underconsumming tortillas and therefore suffering from some sort of dietary disorder. At one of my schools the other day lunch was being served and while I was served more than enough eggs and beans, I found myself with no way to eat them, forks are rarely used out in the villages. A kindergartener quickly identified my problem: lack of tortillas. She presented me with one from the stack her mother sent her to class with. More students became concerned with my lack of tortillas and began piling tortillas on my plate. In Guatemalan society it is extremely rude to refuse any food people give you so I sat there and ate every single tortilla that was given to me. The generosity of those fifteen children will not be forgotten. Although it’s perfectly acceptable for a woman to eat lots of tortillas it is practically a requirement for a man. I was hanging out with my site mate Chris at my house when my landlord Anibal came up to us and started chatting. Chris is a relatively tall guy; he was raised in Texas and played college football. You might call him a good old corn fed American boy. Anibal is a typical Guatemalan man, he stands about 5ft tall, with his boots on. Anibal naturally asked Chris how many tortillas he eats at dinner, the true test of character here. The conversation went something like this, translated from Q’qechi into English for y’all. Anibal: Cristobal how many tortillas do you eat? Chris: A lot. Anibal: Rebecca doesn’t eat enough tortillas, maybe one or two. Me: I usually eat three or four. Anibal and Chris: Thats not enough. Anibal: I eat a lot too, you want to see my kitchen I’ve got a bunch in there. Chris: I eat ten. I’ve got a woman who brings them over to my house for me at dinnertime. Anibal smiles in approval.

The Way to a Man´s Heart is Through His Stomach:

The Key to Forging Successful Professional Relationships wit Host Country Nationals in a Jungle Village.

I was raised in a home where triple chocolate cheese cake and heirloom tomato salsa made regular appearances on the dinner table. The majority of the photos of my childhood involve a freckled redhead sitting on a counter licking batter off spoons and bowls, the utensils of my mother’s culinary genius. My passion, inherited directly from said culinary genius, lies in great food. I do not consider myself a foodie, although I did spend the last several years of my life living in the gourmet ghetto of Berkeley. I would say I have more of a nostalgic attachment to homegrown ingredients and French bakeries. A good vacation was always marked by the discovery of with fresh rougala and my first words were probably Mit Schlag (German for with cream). Sadly, I have found neither rougala nor cream out here in Guatemala. My first three months in training were spent sneaking off and buying lemon pound cake at the only passable bakery in Antigua and I continue to suffer from butter deprivation. The opportunity to cook for myself for the first time presented itself almost six weeks into my time here, when I stayed with a current volunteer. I made German cucumber salad, homemade whole wheat banana pancakes and a vegetable frittata. Sheer bliss.

When searching for a house in Chisec, I had only one requirement: an oven. The house I live in is owned by a man and wife who run a Guatemalan equivalent of a taco truck. This means they have a refrigerator (rare in Chisec) and an oven (I have yet to find another in this town). I knew I’d found a home, ignoring the leaks in the ceiling and lack of hot water. Unfortunately my fantasies of challah every Friday and molten chocolate cakes were harshly interrupted when I discovered that there is no grocery store within two hours. There are a few scattered shops that sell basics like beans and eggs and tomatoes, but the days of bakers sugar and rapid rise yeast are long gone. If I want to buy most ingredients called for in my usual recipes I have to either ask my mother to mail them to me or go to the specialty grocery store nine hours away in Antigua and shell out half my monthly living stipend. Not defeated, I’ve discovered that there are several things that I can make out here with only the ingredients found in Chisec. I’ve adapted a recipe for banana bread that’s been a great hit with the two little boys I live with and I’ve managed to take the surplus of mangoes we’ve got out here, yes this is really the jungle, and the other day I made a mango and plum coffee cake with a cinnamon crumble topping. Baked goods are a currency of sort out here. The first time I opened the oven I discovered the instruction manual still taped inside; the oven had never even been opened. I made a cake for the fourth birthday of one of my host brothers and found myself invited to a party at his grandparent’s house. I taught my host mom how to make banana bread and suddenly I was presented with my very own key to the kitchen.

Realizing the power I now held I decided to make some cinnamon banana bread for first major meeting with my teachers last Thursday. Its difficult holding the attention of a dozen or so young male teachers in 105 degree heat, especially when trying to teach them about the importance of hand washing and teeth brushing, but my banana bread proved magical. I made an agenda for the meeting and included an entire twenty minutes dedicated to eating. The teachers worked diligently in order to quickly get to the snack break and afterwards they chatted away with me, laughing and telling jokes. Suddenly my role in the village has been elevated from lowly public health volunteer to maker of cakes. Who knows what they’ll do when I bring in peanut butter brownies.

So old photos I know, but I just got them uploaded...

I spent Semana Santa (holy week) in Antigua with Brendan and here are a few photos from the processions and our night climb up the volcano.

So I’ve been getting several emails from friends asking if they can come visit. The answer is yes, of course. Please come, bring everyone you know. Even if I didn’t particularly like you at home I’ll probably like you now, so come visit. You can even call it a volunteer trip and help us work on the Chisec Health Clinic, good resume material and you can practice Spanish or for the more daring, Q’qechi. Visitors can come any time but the school year runs from January through October so the best times to come are in November and December.

I’m officially allowed 48 vacation days during my two years of service. I’ll likely be taking the majority of these days traveling to US for Christmas and possibly a little holiday to Europe. Before leaving for Peace Corps, my friend Jesse (he is also a Peace Corps volunteer here in Guatemala) and I talked about how hard core we were going to be, traveling all over South America and not returning home for two years, truly embracing the culture abroad and living out of our backpacks. Jesse and I are now searching online for the cheapest flights to San Francisco so we can fly home together for the holidays. There is nothing shameful about wanting a little family time, and a hot shower…

Peace Corps policy limits travel to a maximum of 21 consecutive days, any travel taken out of country must be approved two weeks in advance and certain areas of Guatemala are off limits, like the town of Livingston and the entire north west corner of the Peten. If we go to other countries with Peace Corps presence we have to abide by the travel restrictions and policies of thats country, but we can also use all the Peace Corps facilities in those countries including complete access to medical care. Cori and Mark and I have been thinking about going to the Bay Islands in Honduras to go SCUBA diving, but we are all completely broke so it might be awhile before we can afford it.

We are officially Peace Corps volunteers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but Peace Corps allows us two weekends a month out of site. We have to call and tell them where we are going, where we are staying and what time we’ll be back. Sometimes I feel like I’m back in high school. The amazing thing about being way out here in Alta Verapaz is that I can take weekend trips to several of the major ecotourism sites in the country. I’m only four hours south of the Tikal ruins, two hours from Laguna Lachua and half an hour from the Candelaria Cuevas and Lagunas Sepalau. So while I may not be able to go visit my friends over on the other side of the country very often, I’m not stuck in the middle of the jungle with nothing to do. This also means that if you decide to come visit there is plenty to do around here.

Two weeks ago Brendan came up and visited and we had an amazing time. We spent the week up in Chisec while I worked and Brendan entertained the local Guatemala children with his basketball skills and caught up on his reading in the hammock. We headed down to Semuc Champey, about three hours south east of Chisec, for the weekend. Semuc Champey is a series of pools that have formed on top of a natural limestone bridge over the Rio Cahabon. It’s impossible to truly describe, you’ll just have to come see it for yourself. The hostel we stayed at is gorgeous, little cabanas on stilts over looking the Rio Cahabon. The hostel has a huge family style dinner every night, a major change from my regular dinner of eggs, beans and tortillas. It can be a bit overwhelming meeting so many travelers; their lives are so completely different from mine. Its hard not to be jealous when they talk about heading up to the Caribbean or down through South America, but this isn’t a vacation for me and I know its an incredible opportunity to get to live and work here rather than just visit.

Saturday morning we got up really early and caught a pick up to Semuc Champey. It’s a 12km ride along a dirt road through the mountains to get to the park. The lack of transportation and isolation of the site have kept it from becoming too touristy, although that’s already changing as hostels in Antigua and Flores run day trips. The park offers a 20Q Peace Corps discount, nice considering eco volunteers worked at the site for over a decade. We climbed up to El Mirador vista point where you can see all the pools and the river, its definitely something off of a postcard. The hike down to the pools is hard and I was so sweaty I felt as if I’d already been swimming. I’d like to say that my deck changing skills have proven incredibly useful here. We swam all morning, accompanied by several Guatemalan teenagers, two of whom I challenged to a race. The ride back down to the hostel from the park was an adventure in itself. We caught a ride in the back of a truck carrying food and crops to be sold at market, sitting the entire ride on bundles of corn, baskets of tomatoes and bags full of Cardamom. My clothes are still stained red from the Cardamom.

So I know this blog is supposed to be about my life in the Peace Corps, but I don’t exist in a vaccum and the people in my life all around the world are having some incredible experiences as well and I thought it necessary to share a bit of that as well. There are some brilliant people in my life, writers, artists, economists and a certain collegiate baseball player but it’s my older brother Justin who is truly gifted. I just want to congratulate Justin, he is both a brilliant scientists as well as an extraordinarily eloquent writer. He has combined his talents and written a chapter titled Cylcodextrins and Their Functions in Cellular Interactions that will be published in one of the leading scientific textbooks. Nice work big bro.

wow mom, don´t we make you proud...

Tierra Linda school yard

My kindergarteners at Tierra Linda

School kitchen

School basketball court

Tierra Linda Elementary School on the border of Mexico

Setzi

Mothers preparing school snack

Students brushing their teeth after snack

Setzi Basico (Jr. High)

Setzi Elementary School

Chisec

More Chisec

As I sat in the school directors office yesterday going over the results of the annual school health evaluation I was due to present on after recess, I overheard a classroom of fourth graders reciting the alphabet in English. Excited to hear my own language, and anxious to see the lesson plan I stepped out to observe. I was immediately disappointed. Half the fourth graders were running around the front of the school playing soccer, a few girls were giggling outside and inside the classroom a teenage student teacher from the local high school was attempting to instruct the few students actually sitting at their desks. He had an old English/Spanish manual and was struggling to teach a language to the students using only the phonetic spellings next to the translated lists of letters and numbers. The 4th grade teacher, who is also the principle of the school, had failed to show up to class again and the other teachers were too busy with their classes to do anything. Were it not for the student teacher the children would have simply been sent home for the day. The sight of children sent to walk home from school because a teacher failed to show up has no place among the images of my own education: substitute teachers, permission slips for trips to the local park and PTA meetings full of parents arguing over the educational merits of including Hanukah songs at the annual school Christmas Pageant. However, a cross cultural comparison of educational systems is completely unnecessary here. Simply put, in Guatemala, education is a privilege not a right.

Public education does exist in this country and this year the government even promised to make all public schooling completely free in an effort to lift the financial burden of sending multiple children to school. There have been some very positive changes as a result of this program though. Families are now sending their daughters to school, and for a group marginalized by Guatemalan society at almost every institutional level, this may be a small step towards equal opportunity for women. However, enrollment in school does not guarantee an education. What the children are learning from their teachers is rarely a pathway towards a brighter future, more often the disinterests from some educators and the lack of emphasis on the importance of participatory teaching techniques, continued education and daily attendance simply reinforces the idea that poverty is permanent. Peace Corps would likely argue with me that I’m failing to understand the Guatemalan cultural perspective and by ignoring this I’m not truly fulfilling my mission as a Volunteer, however if Greg Mortenson, Director of the Central Asian Institute that builds schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan, is correct in saying that the only path towards peace is through education, then Guatemala, a country considered by many to be more dangerous now than during its decade long civil war a generation ago, needs to take a more aggressive stand against the inequalities in its educational system.

Guatemalans love stuff in bags. I don’t understand why. This likely wouldn’t be a problem if they had even a fraction of the same amount of enthusiasm for recycling, but little plastic bags riddle the streets like a second national flower. You can buy anything you want in a bag here. Buying a dozen eggs? Have a bag for each one. Need a drink of water? Grab a bag of water. Does your kid want to bring juice to school? Pour it in a bag, tie it closed and send junior off. Its absolutely incredibly what you can find in a bag here, people will cut off the rind of watermelon, stick it in a bag and sell it on the side of the road as if the natural casing wasn’t good enough. This must somehow be related to the obsession for food on a stick found commonly at state fairs in the US. Next thing you know people here will start selling deep fried twinkies, in a bag.

I officially have been a Peace Corps Volunteer for two and a half weeks. I moved to site on March 29th, my 24th birthday. It was a serious dose of reality moving away from Antigua and the other trainees. Departing on a nine hour ride into the jungle of northern Guatemala, I arrived in my new community hot, sweaty and quite alone. I spent my birthday slapping mosquitoes in an attempt to avoid catching Dengue Fever and trying to figure out if I had enough money to buy and bed and a fan. I didn’t, so I bought the fan. Its usually well over 100 degrees here during the day.

I’ve gotten much more settled over the past weeks and while there is no mall and no Target to run to for new bed linens or wall decorations, I’ve made my room quite homey.

My first great adventure was buying a bed. Chisec is a very small community, but there is a store in the town center that sells beds. There are basically two kinds of beds, hard and soft, and they come in two sizes: for one person or “cama matrimonial” i.e. for two people. I haven’t slept in a twin bed since college, and the thought of sleeping in one for two years brought back bad memories of old dorm mattresses. I bought the double bed. This caused quite a stir among the young men working in the store. This was a bed clearly meant for two people, so who was I planning on sharing it with? Normally it only takes one, or at the most, two people to set up a basic box spring and mattress, but somehow five delivery boys made the three block trip from the store to my house with my bed. It took me well over two hours to get them out of my house after explaining that none of them were going to get to share the bed with me.

I’d like to say I have a routine here, but nothing is routine here and there are surprises and disappointments in every moment of every day. The first three months of service in site are supposed to be the hardest, and heres just a small glimpse into my day and why this is called the hardest job you’ll ever love.

I woke up this morning around 4:45am to the sound of the two toddlers who live in my house screaming. This was a relief because yesterday morning they were up at 4am. Around 6am I made it to the shower outside and enjoyed the cool water as the temperature outside quickly climbed with the sun. At 6:30am my thermometer read 88 degrees outside. I grabbed some granola and put on the least amount of clothing socially acceptable and headed up to the dirt road at the other edge of town that leads to one of the smaller villages I work in. Transportation is unreliable at best. I sat around on a rock, surrounded by wooden huts, banana trees and stray dogs, waiting for a pick up to pass by and take me to the school. After an hour of waiting I sent Mark (one of my best friends who lives on the complete opposite side of the country) a text message saying: Waiting for mythical transportation to arrive and carry me further into the jungle, teachers must have teleporting capabilities can not find them anywhere. Texting Mark is one of my few ways of staying sane during the crazy moments that make up our lives. Eventually the teachers called and said that there weren’t any pick ups coming so they were going to get a microtaxi to take us. It came and picked me up and I road the twenty minutes down the dirt path sitting on a bag full of dead chickens.

I visit a different school each day of the week, and this one is clearly the most beautiful. Down a dirt path about 10kms through the jungle is a tiny village of a few hundred people. The school sits on a hill right off the only road. Theres nothing glamorous about the six cinder block classrooms painted blue and white, but the scenery is beautiful. The schools is surrounded by a thick grove of trees old enough to have watched over children learning for centuries. There is a small grass soccer field carved out of the palm trees and hibiscus bushes and a large thatched roof tree house that the children play in during recess.

Part of adapting to the culture and style of learning means that I can’t actually work on teaching or infrastructure projects before I understand the teaching techniques and learning styles of the teachers and students. I observed classes today and learned as much from the first graders Q’eqchi lessons as the students. One of the six teachers actually gave a health lesson which was incredibly exciting since I’ve observed over 20 classes this week and this teacher was the first to use the Healthy Schools material.

On days when the school has enough money to provide lunch for the students several community mothers come and cook for the kids. Today the chickens I road into the community on became lunch. I was feeling exhausted and my digestive system will likely never be the same after all its been through here, but the mothers offered me some chicken with tortillas and I knew that it would be impolite to refuse. It is going to be absolutely critical to develop a positive relationship with these woman in order to work successfully in the community and sharing a meal is a universal way to create trust and confidence between groups of people, so long after I was full, I accepted seconds and laughed with the mothers in the few words of Q’eqchi I’ve learned so far. Apparently the volunteer before me told them she didn’t like their food and did not eat with them, so I think I’ve already taken the first steps towards gaining there confidence.

After lunch I was absolutely thrilled to see the students go into their classrooms and bring out their toothbrushes and toothpaste and start brushing their teeth. Imagine over a hundred elementary school children sitting around a jungle school brushing their teeth together. Health education is lacking in these communities and basic hygiene habits are not frequently reinforced at home, so tooth brushing at school is one of the main goals of my program. Dental care here is not nearly as advanced as it is in the US, and preventative care is one of the few ways to keep these children room losing all there teeth to cavities. I wish I had brought my camera with me, because after two weeks of struggling to explain why I am here and what my job is I began to wonder if any of this was going to get through. I can’t take credit for their health habits thus far, but the last volunteer clearly created a strong base at this school which will allow me to make even bigger changes and develop a better infrastructure for health education in the community.

The school day ends at 12:30 and fortunately a truck drove by around 1pm and I was able to get a ride back into town. Normally I spend the afternoons in the community running a few errands and eating a lot of mangoes, but I needed to get some things in Coban that aren’t available in Chisec, like bread. Its about a two hour ride into Coban but well worth the trip. I raided the grocery store, stocking up on basics like whole wheat bread, broccoli, lentils and jam and indulged myself with Cheerios and Soy Milk. Imported products are really expensive but there are few things in life as great as a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I sent off a few quick emails and caught a micro back to Chisec. Normally this trip is a quick two hours as the van zips along the road, dangerously passing large trucks full of cows and dodging motorcycles and other road hazards, but today was different. About an hour out of Coban we came upon a large crowd of people on the side of the road all gathered around the mangled dead body of a twelve year old boy that had just died after being hit by a speeding truck. There are few ambulances and it would probable take another few hours for the firefighters to arrive to take the body away so the people could do nothing but wait. My van pulled over and before it had even stopped all the people had jumped out and joined the crowd staring at the blood stained concrete. I stayed in the van. This is the third dead body I’ve seen in the street in as many months. Life in Guatemala can be gruesome and there is no hiding it.

Sometimes I think my life is a big reality show and the jokes on me.

I know I havent updated much these past few weeks, life has been a bit hectic and when you don´t have a refrigerator and its 100 degrees outside, suddenly finding ways to prevent your chocolate from melting become incredibly important. I actually bought a fan before I bought a bed... Anyhow here is a little map of Guatemala, the green department is Alta Verapaz and I live waaaaay up north towards the border of Mexico and the Peten. I have a topographical map of the municipality of Chisec. Its a 18 by 24 inch map and its all jungle except for a 1 inch by 1 inch city in the corner. Learning to love coconuts and living without bread and milk.

Alright so here are a few photos of life in and around the jungle I now call home. I cant take credit for the photos, my site mate Chris took them.

No, not the traditional questions of passover. I already know why this night is different from all other nights. I have a bigger question. Is the substitution of tortillas for matzo kosher... not that they sell bread or yeast in my town anyways but I was just wondering since I have scoured the markets of northern Guatemala and have found no sign of Matzo, or really anything Jewish for that matter

So we officially swore in as Peace Corps Volunteers on Friday. The ceremony was at the US Embassadors house in Guatemala City. Ill give more details later, but here are a few photos...

Dad and Mom in Lake Como, Italy

So my mother and my father share a birthday, March 20th. As I child I thought that not only was this totally normal but it also meant that you had to marry someone that had the same birthday as you. This caused great anxiety in my six year old life as I shared a birthday with the smelly French kid in my first grade class. It took me well beyond a reasonable age to figure out that shared birthdays were not a requirement for marriage. I actually tell this story in Spanish to a lot of people, its easy to tell and makes people laugh, however it backfired at me when I told our tech trainer. It turns out his son and I share a birthday and now he is trying to set us up. In high school I shared a birthday with my chem lab partner Alex and he is down here in Antigua right now so we are going to celebrate our  birthday together on Sunday.  Anyhow I wanted to wish my mom and dad a very happy belated birthday. In case anyone is wondering, my parents are probably the coolest parents in the world. Love you guys!