Geothermal electricity plant that uses steam generated from the volcano vents.

Hiking down to the lava fields in several inches of screed.

Lava field.

Steam coming off the lava field.

Roasting marshmallows over a gap in the field with magma underneath.

Sunset. Volcanos Agua and Fuego to the right.

After an arduous afternoon hike...

Just smoking now. Pacaya is a volcano outside of the capital that always been noted as a fun, short hike. I had been meaning to hike it (as one of the four active volcanoes in Guatemala) ever since I got here more than two years ago... and FINALLY hiked it this weekend! Derc arranged all the transportation and a guide, and we headed out with a few other volunteers. The hike was pretty steep, and a lot of it was in several inches of tiny rocks - not what I had pictured volcanic ash as. We hiked up in late afternoon and the sun set as we were coming back down. In the dark we were able to see flashes of light from Fuego erupting!

The HAND-operated ferris wheel!

Catholic church in town decorated and bustling with activity.

"Dance of the Conquerors"

Showing off. :)

The princesses of the feria.

Dancing horse, Condesa! She danced to several songs and it was REALLY cool!

Little Lauris' aunt was the Queen of Agriculture.

This is the back side of Floria's kite. It includes the main symbols of our town.

Floria, Child Queen of the Feria. She's Lauris' cousin.

Last year's Queen of the Feria and her escort - both are teachers!

Lauris and Saturnina dancing marimba down the walk while throwing baskets of candy into the crowd.

I think Lauris is just the cutest little three year old!

Floria, with her queenly attire.I never thought that I'd like going to beauty pageants. However, pageants are a big part of community entertainment here, and I really love them now! This month we have had three pageants, and tonight was the "crowning" ceremony. All the pictures except for the two with the kite are from tonight. All the girls are dressed in the traditional dress of our town (each municipality has a different blouse / skirt / belt combination).

Felipe, showing the teachers the red composting worms (Roja Coqueta).

Explaining how to make a tire garden.

Brainstorming lesson plan ideas that included the school gardens.

Seeds for the gardens, examples of library books, and disaster management materials.

Practicing the proper layering for a compost pile.

Tire garden!

Derc warmed everyone up in the morning with a little Tai Chi.This year we organized three "beginning of the year" workshops and we finished the last of them this morning! Derc talked about inorganic trash management, Felipe (an agronomist from local NGO Asodisa) talked about green composting, and I talked about school gardens as a project. I always love workshops because it is so fun to have a big group of teachers all in the same room, laughing, chatting, and planning projects for the year. If you are interested in a more in-depth description of the Healthy Schools program that we are working with, click here and here to previous posts.

Elote and Fatima playing Sequence.

Irritated kitty.

For some reason, she loves this swing!

Little peaches.

Plum blossoms, I think.

Apples in January?!

Elote loves climbing the trees.

Where's Waldo?The fruit trees in the compound garden are blooming away and already producing small fruit....in JANUARY! I have long since given up trying to understand seasons here. Last year, there was "wet" and "less wet", and the year before there was "dry" and "more dry". You can tell it's almost Christmas and Thanksgiving because it's so cold that you can see your breath inside your room, but other than that, there really isn't much difference day to day, month to month.

When Ryan came down about a year ago, he helped me draw part of this world map in a local junior high that has donated one room to be a "friendly space". This space is supposed to be used for resources and information for teens, for leadership activities, and generally to provide a place for recreation. I started drawing this map about a year and a half ago, little by little, mostly with teens that showed up on Tuesdays. Drawing a large world map with the grid method is long and tedious process, and we just got to the painting part this month. When viewing the map, it is good to see it as an exercise in restrained creativity, as opposed to a work of cartography. Oh, and someone should call Alaska to let them know that they are no longer part of the United States (the kids accidentally painted it brown, and the rest of the states purple-gray).

It wasn't long ago that Fatima claimed that she didn't like cats....now she tries her hardest to amuse Elote.

Does she think that she's a model?!

We caught a baby rat!

Although curious about the baby rat, she never did want to hunt it.

The corn dough gets really thick and heavy when it's almost done cooking.

Today I was invited over to the house of four school principals to learn how to make Christmas tamales. They're made with a corn-water-salt-vegetable lard dough, filled with a chunk of pork, two pepper slices, and an incredible tomato sauce wrapped in special leaves from the coast. We started working on them at 8 this morning, and ate them just before 8 tonight - a long day of work, but worth it! We also made Ponche - a mix of all fresh fruit (coconut, pineapple, papaya, apples, jocote, grapes...) with cinnamon and sugar, all boiled together for an hour. Their whole family is staying awake until midnight (which is like New Year's here) to go to mass and to light fireworks and firecrackers while drinking a coconut-rice hot drink. I'd loved to have stayed, but I am sooooo bone tired from working in the kitchen all day! It was a really fun day and kept me from being too homesick for Christmas with my family.

The college system here is set up so that people with full-time jobs are able to take Friday-Saturday classes to work toward their bachelors degree. Many of the teachers in our school system (a little less than a quarter, I would guess) are taking classes, and two of them are getting degrees in psychology. The three of us have had great conversations about where psychology and education meet in the elementary classrooms and I have greatly enjoyed their friendship. One of these young men, Crisitan, invited Derc and I to his wedding, and it was beautiful! It's been a gorgeous sunny, warm day, and the wedding and reception were wonderful. I loved running into a bunch of the other teachers and meeting their children (some less than a month old!). Estofado was served, which is a dish made on special occasions (click here for ingredients and a picture of it cooking).

Today we threw the party of a lifetime.... Or so it seemed. :) Derc and I are both passing Christmas here and we thought that it would be fun to have a little Christmas cookie party for all the people in town who have supported us, been our friends, or just generally been friendly to us over the last couple years. We hand-made and hand-delivered invitations this month, and Fatima and I spent the last week baking cookies and picking up all the supplies for mulled apple cider and eggnog. By three this afternoon (when the party was supposed to start, roughly) we were ready to go! We tried to make this an open-house kind of event, but everyone seemed to come roughly on time and stay for a couple hours. It turned out well - about 60-75 people came by! Our cookies and drinks all disappeared over the course of the afternoon, as did the gingerbread houses. :) It was so pleasant to chat with all these people that we greatly appreciate - and it was doubly nice to receive invitations to come visit on these cold December nights at their houses!

Elote meets tree.Today I received a surprise package from two old college roommates - otherwise known as the BEST roommates a girl could have. :) This little tree (which plugs into my computer and has lights on it!), a stocking, candy canes, and a little reindeer Beanie Baby are just some of the goodies they sent down. Thanks, Charity and Emilie! They even included an ornament that says "Grandma" - a flattering nickname that I wore proudly all throughout college. :)

In the background, you can see the beautiful Christmas table-runner (well, it's supposed to be a long shawl-type affair) that my mom and I picked out for Christmas while she was here. Thanks, Mom!

For those of you who I haven't yet told, Elote is the name of my new kitten. "Elote" is the word used here for corn that is eaten (different words for corn that is grown, corn that is sown, and corn that is eaten), and I named her that because she has the three colors of corn that is eaten here and because she was born during harvest. :)

This weekend I tried making a gingerbread house with Fatima for the first time - her first time ever having a gingerbread house, and my first time trying to make the cookies that make the house. The results were mixed, due to the near-disasters that the ginger cookies encountered, but Fatima had never seen a house like this before so she made no judgments. :) Her cousin Oralis and sister Sheny came over for the decorating of the house (after I had cemented the pieces together the night before), and we all had a lot of fun! Even though they'd never decorated one before, Fatima and Oralis were naturals at designing the outside. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for sending down the decorations! :)

Lauren dancing with the turkey....

Look! It's a Butterball Turkey!

Lisa and I were in charge of the turkey. We didn't know how to truss a turkey, so first we played cat's cradle with the strings.

Turkey: buttered, salted, peppered, rosemary-ed, bagged, and put in the oven.

Lauren making green bean casserole!

Camote, apples, carrots and brown sugar.

Gravy and turkey, nearly done!

Betty making mashed potatoes.

Betty, way too excited about our superb turkey.

Nicholi and Kristen, piling up the plates with all the goodies!

We all shared something that we were thankful for and toasted each one with wine. This is Amber.

Passing all the food around.

Homemade bread, steamed spinach and mushrooms, garlic mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, turkey, camote surprise, and green bean casserole!

After-dinner walk around the farm!

Sunset.

Dessert! First one is choco-mint-bread-cookie, Pumpkin Cheesecake, and Carrot Cake.Today we celebrated Thanksgiving a few days early. We headed out to Eduardo's house (he used to be a PC agriculture trainer so he has a soft spot for volunteers who can't spend Thanksgiving with their families) just a couple miles down the highway early this morning. Somehow, in the midst of many jokes, great confusion, lots of cooks in the kitchen, several versions of recipes for traditional dishes, and a multitude of last-minute substitutions, we managed to produce a delicious Thanksgiving dinner! It was so wonderful to share food and laughter with everyone who came.

Getting ready to start from the top of the mountain.

Emilie coming in for a landing

Charity.

Tim coming in over the river.We decided to spend one afternoon on a canopy zipline tour. It seemed like we were driving for a hundred years up the mountain, and in a flash the ten or so ziplines ended.....but it was such a cool experience!

Two of my roommates from college (and a 'plus one') came down this month to visit for eight days and we spent one long weekend in Copan, Honduras. There truly is nothing quite like a couple of girls whom you shared limited square footage with for four years to keep you laughing at everything life throws at you. :) Thanks for coming down, Emilie, Charity and Tim!

One of the coolest things we did (besides make S'MORES!) was go up to Macaw Mountain. It is a coffee farm / nature reserve / bird rescue-refuge. The owner has been collecting exotic birds from the black market, pet stores and other inappropriate situations that these birds (that really aren't pets) have found themselves in. He built this ten acre reserve for them, and most of them still have to live in aviaries (although at least in a natural setting) because of being semi-domesticated, or having their wings clipped and whatnot.

The kids built medium-sized kites and flew them in the morning.

A view of the kite area after lunch. The big ones weren't going to be flown until the afternoon, and we had to head home.

Spread-eagle pig roast!

November first is a special holiday here in Guatemala to commemorate family members who have died. Families go to the graveyards and bring Fiambre to eat (a meat, beet, olive, cheese salad) while they fly kites and decorate graves. This year I went to the Sumpango Kite Festival, and it was worth the trip!

Buying veggies in town. These ladies always try to teach me a new Kaqchikel phrase every time I walk by!Lauris - one of my favorite 3 year olds.

Rosenda's mother, teaching us how to make puliqui.

Old fountain at Casa Santo Domingo, an abandoned monastery from the 16th century.

Mom and I at Iximche, the ruins of the Kaqchikel empire and first colonial capital.

My new favorite picture, taken by Mom. This is Olivia (weaving teacher) and her nephew.

Mom and I saying goodbye to the world - in case we were about to die in this TINY rickety airplane.

Mom, Karen (friend from Mom's work) and I at Tikal.

Mom came to my old host family's house to meet my host parents! They were thrilled to meet her!

One of the many old earthquake-damaged buildings from colonial Antigua.

We visited a macadamia nut farm outside of Antigua, and got free face massages. :)

These are the neighbors that own the corner store that backs up to my bedroom. They were stopping by to drop off birthday gifts for Fatima!Ok, so maybe this is old news....

My mom came down to visit for 15 days at the end of September and beginning of October! We had a lot of fun going to Tikal, Iximche, markets, Antigua, visiting a few of my schools, playing card games with my sitemates, eating our weight (and then some) in fantastic Guatemalan typical food (and learning how to make some!), and just hanging out (although it was rainy and cold...). My mom takes wonderful photos, so I recommend that you visit her blog to see more pictures (flowers, bugs, more Tikal pictures...and a little of everything!)Mom's Blog

Thanks for coming down, Mom! I had a great time with you!

…when you scratch your scalp and automatically check your fingernails for lice.

…when you ask your sitemate to inspect the marks on your stomach. “Do you think these look more like flea bites or bedbug bites?”

…when you meet your new Peace Corps sitemate, what you are REALLY wondering in the back of your mind is whether or not she would pull a tapeworm out of your rear end if you needed her to help.

…when you have visitors from the states, you stand outside the bathroom door and shout questions such as: “Would you say that it’s more yellow and foamy, or more brownish-clumpy?”

…when you find yourself happily singing these words around a table of new friends and relatives: “Appy beard-ray du ewe!....etc, etc” and you forget that once upon a time those words used to be “Happy Birthday to you!”

…when you go home for a visit, you are shocked that you own skirts that *gasp* barely cover your knees, shorts, and sleeveless shirts!

…when the rain wakes you up at night, you delay your plans for the next day by three hours each – to make sure that you give the municipal workers plenty of time to clear the new mudslides from the roads.

…when you get together with other volunteers, you share your fever stories: who had the weirdest hallucination before they could get their fever down.

…when your goal for the weekend is to find enough water so that you can heat up a bucket bath.

…when you travel two hours by bus just to buy that US candy that you’ve been craving all month.

…when the most English you speak on any given day is lecturing the family spaniel to PLEASE stop peeing on the leg of your kitchen table every morning.

…when sometimes you could swear that you are living in that horrible movie, Groundhog Day, because there are no notable seasonal changes in scenery between September and June.

…when you can lure every US citizen within several miles to your house with two words: “Ghirardelli Brownies”. And even though your mom and dad gave you enough mixes to make six batches, nine months later you still have two left, “just in case”.

…when the most interesting thing you did today was gossip about the price of tomatoes, and it was truly fascinating.

...when you go on vacation, here are the beautiful things you see:One of the seven spring-fed pools of Semuc Champey. Swimming in these is glorious!

Pools from above, after an agonizing hike in the tropics.Inside of the caves at Lanquin.More Lanquin caves.The time the cave guide saved me from certain death in the caves. Just kidding, this is totally posed.

Watching the marriage proposal.

Yes, that is a live chicken being sacrificed over a fire in the Blessing of the Corn.

The Coffee Harvest.

Traje from nearby counties.

Traje from all over the country.

Tia Ana with little Lauris.

This poor kid was all tuckered out for all the dancing.

Kite Dance!

Cutie waiting for her turn to participate

Grave Decorating and Kite Dance

Giggling best friends watching the events

Traje from all over the country!

Pottery making women with the local dress

Wedding Party from Solola

Dance of the Dwarves!

Tortoise and conch shells as instruments from the Caribbean

September 15 is Independence Day in Guatemala, but the whole month of September is filled to the brim with parades, school events, marching bands, and celebrations! Today was the first of these events - a six hour parade with skits at the end with the elementary and junior high students. It's my favorite event of the whole year! Every sector (which is a group of 4-6 schools in this district) picked a theme and gave a skit about it. Some of the themes were: Spirituality in Giving Birth of the Garifunas (descendents of escaped African slave that live on the Caribbean side of the country); Coffee Harvest in Santiago (a nearby county); Pot-making in Santa Apolonia; The Traditional Marriage Proposal (3 sectors did this, but each was very different and original!); Culture of Chichicastenango (they enacted a saint day that is celebrated December 21); The Blessing of the Cornfields before Planting; Selection of the Rawanajt (kind of like a Mayan beauty pageant); Dance of the Dwarves (which was a big hit back in the 60s-70s when there was no electricity, and therefore no tvs); Dance of the Kites (November 1st holiday where everyone goes to a graveyard to decorate the graves of those who have died to remember them, and also to fly kites); and last of all, several marching bands from three schools made an appearance in the parade.

Eddy and Dora wait to receive the trophy for "Making Pottery in S.A."Out of the 400+ pictures I took (did I mention that it is my favorite event of the year?!) I tried to quickly pick out a few that would give you a taste of what today was like.

In retrospect, the blog title I chose before coming (Adventures and Mishaps Aplenty, of course) wasn’t a bad guess at what living in Guatemala would be like. However, as I think back over the events of the last two years, a few other possible titles come to mind. Per usual, this is all in good fun - don't take it too seriously.

The War Against the Rats. (In this scenario, I think that the rats in my ceiling would be the Russians, but it’s up for debate. P.S. This is a wordplay on War of the Rats). From “Gringa” to “Seño Beti”: A Journey through the Heart of a Small Town.Back to the 1890s: How to Survive without a Kitchen Sink or a Hot Shower.The Fishbowl: How Being the Center of Town Gossip Changes the Way You Live.Suero Casero: It’s What Keeps Diarrhea from Killing You.Passive-Aggressiveness: What Every Development Professional Should Know About Motivation.Mr. Postman, Is There a Letter for Me? (my postman’s name is Luis, by the way, and he is very nice).Waiting for the Sun, Waiting for the Rain. (wordplay on the book Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light).Bureaucracy: How One Person’s Bad Choice Becomes a Rule that Makes Our Lives Harder.Life as a Venn Diagram: Blurring the Lines between Bribes, Gifts of Appreciation, and Doing What You Have to Do to get What You Need.Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda: Letting Perfectionism Go to Stay Sane in Uncertain Times.By the Skin of My Teeth and the Hair off my Back.See Bethany Run. See Bethany Run Away from the Growling Dog. See Dog Bite. See Blood Drip from Bethany’s Leg. Run, Bethany, Run.Determination and Sense of Humor: An Idiot’s Guide to Spilling and Cleaning Oil-Based Paint off of Bus Floors.Life as a Roller Coaster: Feeling like You Are Thirteen Again.

By request of my mom, here are some bigger pictures from the last post. My internet isn't very fast this week (about the equivalent of our old dial-up), so I just chose a few. Soon I'll have the pictures of the girls in formal wear, I promise!

Judges' table.

Today was the 43rd anniversary of the primary school in town (620 students!) and to celebrate, a beauty pageant was held for the schoolgirls. It was the social ebent of the month! One girl from each grade was nominated by the teachers, with three students from kindergarten. The girls first came out in "fantasy clothing", then in "sports clothing", and finally gala dresses to give their speeches about how to prevent natural disasters through environmental care. WOW! Even the four year old girls gave little speeches! I quickly ran out of camera battery - everyone was just so creative! In between the major events, the younger kids performed dances and lip synced.

My favorite part was the "sports" part. One girl came as a bull fighter (and brought her own cow, I might add, who was absolutely terrified the whole time), a parachuter, a hanglider, a traithlete, a scuba diver, a karate expert, and two cowgirls. How adorable! Fatima was one of the cowgirls, and my family rented a coin-slot-bucking-horse from the mall a couple hours away so she could ride a horse onstage...cute! The other cowgirl brought back-up dancers (a clown and a cowboy)!

Fatima's dress for "fantasy clothing" was entirely made out of trash, and she was "the fairy with an environmental conscience", and she her walk-in song was Waka Waka (the world cup song). Another girl dressed up as a quetzal, which is an endangered (and official national) bird here. You can also see a couple of Cleopatras in there, and some fairies and butterflies. Part 2 will have the results of the competition - I had to borrow someone else's camera and am still waiting for the pictures.

There are any number of marketable skills that you can gain from any given job, and Peace Corps assignments are no exception. I am grateful for the opportunity to have a job abroad, and have learned much more about sustainable development, language, culture, teaching, and organization than I ever expected to gain from this experience. That aside, there are a few things that no one thinks to mention about living abroad in a rural location on a fairly limited budget. Here are some skills I wasn’t expecting to gain during the last couple of years:

Hoarding. Call it cheap, miserly, stringent, tacaña, or whatever else you want to call it, but when you find yourself counting your chocolate chips (to ration them out), bartering with the vegetable ladies to save the equivalent of five US cents, planning your school visits around specific snack schedules that you have memorized (chocolate atol with bananas on Thursdays at Las Mejoranas!), and taking everything that the volunteers who are leaving offer (be it used socks, dry pens, or moldy books), it is time to admit that you are a hoarding miser.

Pest removal. Lice, bedbugs, fleas, mice, rats, spiders, silver bugs, brown recluses, ants, giant ron-rones….nothing can stop you now!

A great appreciation for your own mortality. With this comes well-founded suspicion of any kind of transportation that is not your own two feet in a good pair of shoes.

A firm belief in all old-wives’ tales concerning the buying, preparation and consumption of food. “Cold” foods (anything that can’t be boiled) are not to be eaten in the morning or the night time, or on cloudy days. If it doesn’t have corn and beans, it’s not a meal. It’s good for your health to put spoonfuls of sugar in your coffee – didn’t you know that sugar is fortified with iron?

Sadness gives you diarrhea – bacterial infections and giardia are just the excuses we make for denying that we are sad about something.

Fear of the dark that borders on paranoia. “Leave my compound after six at night?! Are you CRAZY?” After all, the street dogs’ eyes turn a devilish yellow at night, and they rove throughout town, looking for what to devour.

A new appreciation for beauty. “Wow, it’s so cool that you have gold stars on your two front teeth! They really light up your smile!”

A broad sense of humor. Consider the following joke that I heard three weeks ago (that still makes me laugh out loud every time I retell it). You have to wait until someone complains about how hard it is to navigate in a particular city. Then you jump into the conversation with:

"Oh, well, you think it takes a long time to get anywhere in Esquipulas, huh? You should try driving in El Salvador. They say that back when they were first designing the roads, the engineers went to a farmer and asked him to let his cows loose. Everywhere the cows walked, they built a road."

Hahahaha. Also, it's so easy to please a crowd here with a joke. During the reforestation event, one of the brush-clearers found a snake that he thought would be cute to throw over where I was planting...luckily it was dead (and quite harmless), but he got his money's worth of scream out of me. I retorted with "The only way I like colebras is when they are rolled in sour sugar and sold alongside gum in the corner store." (like sour gummy worms, was the point) I swear that the teachers are STILL laughing about that one.

Who hasn’t heard that phrase? Well, they are words well spoken. We all have stories about people sighing, shaking their heads and saying, “Never say ‘never’.” And to top it off, they turn out to be right. “I have never had a dog bite me. They sometimes bark when I walk by certain houses, but I have never had a problem with the dogs here.” This morning, bright and early, on a road that I have walked three times a week for almost a year and a half, a dog came barreling down the road and tried to take a chunk out of my calf…luckily, between my determination to live and a neighbor’s timely hurling of a large rock at the dog, he only managed to break through the skin a little and leave a big bruise. After washing up at the neighbor’s house, I continued on my day, not much put out. After returning to town, a good friend and her husband drove me back to the house to see if the dog had been vaccinated against rabies (he had been), and to put him under supervision for 15 days (just in case). “Street food has never made me sick.” Everyone who has ever traveled to a developing country has a story about this one. You can fill in the blanks. “People never stop to pick me up on Thursdays when I am walking out to visit the schools.” Today alone I got to know the baker that lives up on the mountain, the Pepsi truck drivers, the cousin of one of my favorite teachers, and owner of a school supplies store in town…all offering free transportation – on a Thursday, no less. “There has never been a major natural disaster in our county.” …And then Agatha bared her ugly teeth. In our county alone, fifteen people died in landslides, more than thirty-five families lost their homes, more families had their crops swept away, and there are still electrical and water problems all over. I have discovered that emergency disaster relief is not a good career choice for me, even though it was truly inspiring to see how quickly community leaders banded together to help. “I will never speak Spanglish.” At first, I said this because I was supplementing my knowledge of Spanish with English words. Now, I find myself supplementing my English with Spanish (especially verbs, for some reason). Two words explain this: Language Poisoning. An acute illness similar to food poisoning, the symptoms are as follows: 1. You have two or more languages simmering in your brain, but you open your mouth and no words come out. In this first stage, you feel as if your thoughts are incommunicable. 2. When you open your mouth to speak, you find yourself vomitously spewing an incomprehensible jumble of words from different languages that not even your mother can understand. In this second stage, you know your thoughts are incommunicable. 3. After a while, you notice that this primarily affects your native tongue. Your other (physical) tongue seems to have lost it’s limber efficiency, and feels like that boiled cow tongue you ate last week: swollen, dry, tough, and in the way of anything nice coming out of your mouth. 4. Suddenly, you find yourself moaning, groaning, and clutching your head, hoping desperately for recovery, but knowing that you must let the ailment run its course and hope that your brain will somehow acquire immunity to language poisoning for the future. Here are the “never statements” that I dread may have repercussions for the future: “There has never been Dengue, Typhoid or Malaria in this area of the country.” “I have never been robbed here.” “We have never had a big earthquake here. All the big ones are more south.”

Agatha

Above (at the beginning of the post) are pictures of one of the schools that was affected by landslides locally. Behind this building there used to be three more classrooms, but they are so entirely destroyed that you can't tell they used to be there. Classes still need to be given to the students, and now their only choice is to do so outside, and run home anytime it starts to rain (given the continued state of risk for more landslides)

Today we had a fun event with all of the teachers for Reforestation Day! We all met in the middle of town and carried trees out to a school 8 kilometers out of town to plant them (along with a few hundred other trees). We all brought a little bit of something to share for lunch. Who thought I'd be having a picnic lunch today with fried chicken, potato salad and curried lentils?!

Preschoolers helping each other get ready to brush their teeth.

The principal of a certified school, proudly holding the certifying diploma.

Exercise! An important part of health - look at those adorable preschoolers!

Best friends who brush together, stay healthy together. :)

One school painted some really fun "health murals" all over their outside walls, and these fourth grade girls are really proud that they helped with this painting!

Earthquake Drill (photo courtesy of Derc Over)

Washing out a Snack Cup (photo courtesy of Derc Over)

Cute! That's all I can say about this one! (Photo courtesy of Derc Over)

Here are a few pictures of kids and events that warm the heart! It often seems like on a day-to-day basis that I'm not doing very much work.... but then you show up unannounced at the schools are you see that people are putting the information and suggestions from your workshops and newsletters into practice! Kids washing hands without being asked, other ones brushing their teeth rather enthusiastically, others putting trash into the trash can (some even are separating inorganic, organic and recyclables!), or a whole school doing their first ever earthquake drill!

The program that I am working in is a pilot program that first included all the rural schools in the county instead of working in only three schools. Next March, they will be completing the fifth year of the program, just as another 20-30 other counties all over the country are beginning the same program, using the strategies that we have developed here. My Peace Corps boss came to visit last week, and was pleasantly surprised to see that about 20 of the 26 schools will be able to move from level 1 to level 2 (there are three levels in all, with increasingly stringent health and safety requirements) this September! I hadn't realized how far the schools had come in the last year until he (an outside, fairly objective eye) pointed it out. How encouraging!

Who hasn’t heard that phrase? Well, they are words well spoken. We all have stories about people sighing, shaking their heads and saying, “Never say ‘never’.” And to top it off, they turn out to be right. “I have never had a dog bite me. They sometimes bark when I walk by certain houses, but I have never had a problem with the dogs here.” This morning, bright and early, on a road that I have walked three times a week for almost a year and a half, a dog came barreling down the road and tried to take a chunk out of my calf…luckily, between my determination to live and a neighbor’s timely hurling of a large rock at the dog, he only managed to break through the skin a little and leave a big bruise. After washing up at the neighbor’s house, I continued on my day, not much put out. After returning to town, a good friend and her husband drove me back to the house to see if the dog had been vaccinated against rabies (he had been), and to put him under supervision for 15 days (just in case). “Street food has never made me sick.” Everyone who has ever traveled to a developing country has a story about this one. You can fill in the blanks. “People never stop to pick me up on Thursdays when I am walking out to visit the schools.” Today alone I got to know the baker that lives up on the mountain, the Pepsi truck drivers, the cousin of one of my favorite teachers, and owner of a school supplies store in town…all offering free transportation – on a Thursday, no less. “There has never been a major natural disaster in our county.” …And then Agatha bared her ugly teeth. In our county alone, fifteen people died in landslides, more than thirty-five families lost their homes, more families had their crops swept away, and there are still electrical and water problems all over. I have discovered that emergency disaster relief is not a good career choice for me, even though it was truly inspiring to see how quickly community leaders banded together to help. “I will never speak Spanglish.” At first, I said this because I was supplementing my knowledge of Spanish with English words. Now, I find myself supplementing my English with Spanish (especially verbs, for some reason). Two words explain this: Language Poisoning. An acute illness similar to food poisoning, the symptoms are as follows: 1. You have two or more languages simmering in your brain, but you open your mouth and no words come out. In this first stage, you feel as if your thoughts are incommunicable. 2. When you open your mouth to speak, you find yourself vomitously spewing an incomprehensible jumble of words from different languages that not even your mother can understand. In this second stage, you know your thoughts are incommunicable. 3. After a while, you notice that this primarily affects your native tongue. Your other (physical) tongue seems to have lost it’s limber efficiency, and feels like that boiled cow tongue you ate last week: swollen, dry, tough, and in the way of anything nice coming out of your mouth. 4. Suddenly, you find yourself moaning, groaning, and clutching your head, hoping desperately for recovery, but knowing that you must let the ailment run its course and hope that your brain will somehow acquire immunity to language poisoning for the future. Here are the “never statements” that I dread may have repercussions for the future: “There has never been Dengue, Typhoid or Malaria in this area of the country.” “I have never been robbed here.” “We have never had a big earthquake here. All the big ones are more south.”

Agatha

Below are pictures of one of the schools that was affected by landslides locally. Behind this building there used to be three more classrooms, but they are so entirely destroyed that you can't tell they used to be there. Classes still need to be given to the students, and now their only choice is to do so outside, and run home anytime it starts to rain (given the continued state of risk for more landslides).

Today was the last soccer tournament for the area, and the winners of girl and boy soccer will be moving on to "state" finals at the beginning of next month. Pictured is the sudden death losing shot for the girls, the boy team who won (with their coach and supporting teachers) and the goalie and two of her friends from the winning girls team. For the group picture, I had to catch them off guard to get anyone to smile, since team pictures are extremely solemn affairs.

The tournament this morning was a fun way to release pent-up enthusiasm and energy - especially for the teachers, who are spending tomorrow preparing two schools to host a "Congreso", or huge conference, for preschool teachers. It is estimated that 700 teachers will be descending upon our tiny town, so there is a lot to do before they all show up on Wednesday for three days. I've been happily drafted into helping serve lunch, although I have no idea how we're going to find places for 700 people to sit! Should be an adventure!

This is Lola, the newest edition to the family compound. She like cuddling, the color yellow, giving kisses, teasing the dog, and eating apples and tomatoes.

And yes, when my host sister introduced this baby bunny to me this morning, my heart went "ba-dump, ba-dump". :)

...When a rat fell from the ceiling outside my room today while I was enjoying a late lunch on my bed. Even though this rat and it's friends and family are responsible for nights of sleeplessness and for eating into my food (back when I wasn't wise enough to put it all in storage bins), I still couldn't quite bear to have the rat's face in the picture. I had thrown poison up into the ceiling a while ago, and while the poison weakened the rat, Rocky (the spaniel that lives in my house) made quick work of putting the rat out of its misery.

...that effigies of Judas are burned on the night before resurrection Sunday all over Guatemala? "Judas" is hung up on Friday (here, on a lamp post behind my house), and then taken down on Saturday afternoon and taken around town with loudspeakers, all the while decrying local and national corruption and misuse of power (a little ironic?).

...that mango skin has urushiol - the same irritant that is in poison ivy - in it? Well, I know that now. Turns out that that annoying little blister phenomenon that I thought was just mango acid drying out my lips actually turns into a huge, scaly, red, itchy rash all over one's face and neck, when one persists in eating mangoes. Oh boy, Guatemala, what do you have for me next? (ok, knock on wood - I have not had worms or tuberculosis yet, and for that I am truly thankful.) Sorry guys, no picture of the rash - there is no need to make a photographic record of it.

...that Mother's Day is HUGE in Guatemala! Below I have pictures from one of the (many) celebrations I went to, including mothers playing games and their children performing songs, dances and dramas for them. The first week of May is spent in preparation of these celebrations (which also include lunch for the mothers prepared by the young women who are not yet mothers), and the second week is chock full of the parties. Most of the celebrations also have raffles, and try as I might, I could not convince anyone that I am not a mother, and so was also given the lunches and general favors that they received.

"But, senyo, how old are you?"

"Well, I am 23, but I'm not a mother yet."

"But senyo, how can that be so?"

....who can argue with that? Especially when women younger than me were cheering their fifth grade children on, with another strapped to their backs, another sitting in their lap, and three in grades in between.

All in all, the Mother's Day celebrations in the schools and in the community were very entertaining - complete with the most adorable children in the world (the tiny preschoolers in traditional dress) performing dances for their mothers. :)

On Mother's Day, I invited my original host family out to have lunch at my house, and they accepted! It was such a pleasure to see them, and fun to show them around town and finally prepare a whole meal for my host mom who seems to never stop working around her house.

Above: preschoolers

Below: Host family from training (minus brother who is taking the picture)

Fourth graders "playing" their instruments along with a lip-sync band.

Two mothers "feeding" their sixth grade children a bottle filled with Pepsi - first one done wins!

(Judas in the town square, being burned with fireworks and other flammable things. The head had been removed already, since they use the same one every year.)My boss - in an egg-white whipping competition: whoever got their eggs to stick to the plate upside-down won. She has a great sense of humor, even though she lost.

Looking for a coin under a plate full of flour, without using their hands.Shy first grade students in a drama about how her whole life, a mother has to put up with crying babies, even when she has housework to do.

Senyo Olivia invited me to her house to see how the special bread for Holy Week is made. Although almost all household work (including food preparation) is done by women here, this bread is made exclusively by the men. A few families in town have the brick oven that is needed to make this bread, and here you can see the oven heating up. After it reaches its peak heat with the fire, the oven is cleaned out quickly and the little breads are placed directly on the hot bricks, where they bake for 15-20 minutes. The recipe that is used for this bread is different from the bread eaten year-round, although no one could quite tell me what was different about it..... I guess that is one of the downsides of not being able to speak Kaqchikel here, as the bakers weren't exactly fluent in Spanish. For three days, about 500 little breads are baked each day in preparation for the Holy Week celebrations. I thought that Senyo Olivia told me that the bread is baked specially for the people who carry the "floats" that have Jesus carrying his cross and Mary through the streets in processions all throughout this week, but then she gave me three breads to take home....and since I am not baptized into the Catholic church and will not be one of the twenty or thirty people that are needed to carry each float, maybe I misunderstood what the bread is for. Either way, I promptly slathered it in butter and luxuriated in every tasty bite of pan! In my opinion, it tastes like a fresh-baked, "country white" bread - except with the additional "fresh out of the fire" taste, too. Yum!

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What makes a good lesson?

So far, the idea of using creativity in the classroom is fairly new in Guatemala, and most of the teachers still use dictation and lecture as a main teaching style for all of their classes. I have to admit, that was NOT one of my favorite ways to learn, and that has rarely been the teaching style of the teachers that I have had throughout my life.

Health is a subject that is easily adaptable to an active teaching style, since there are many immediate applications of whatever lesson you are teaching: hand washing, bathing, cleaning up trash, reducing river pollutants, proper latrine use, nutrition....

In training, we were taught how to use "The Learning Cycle" to structure health lessons. Begin with an activity (drama, puppet show, game, ice breaker, creative writing assignment - anything that requires student participation, and 'lecture' only when absolutely necessary) that has to do with your theme for the day.

1. Pick one objective: "The students will learn the importance of protecting the river water from pollutants (bathing in the river, doing laundry in the river, tossing trash into the river, excreting fecal waste near the river...) because everyone needs to use that water."

2. Pick an interactive activity to illustrate the problem: The skit of el Rio Jose that travels down the mountain, meeting four people who are polluting the water in different ways, and then at the bottom of the mountain a child fills a glass with water that comes in pipes to her house from the river, and gets sick with fever and diarrea.

3. After the activity, ask reflection questions: What happened in this skit? How do you feel about what happened in the skit?

4. Then move on to generalization questions: Does this happen in your community? Who does this affect?

5. Finally, move on to application questions: What can we do to change this situation? When can we change this situation?

6. The questions from step 5 will always end in an action plan, which ends in some kind of activity for the students (going to to river to pick up trash, holding a community training for parents and neighbors about the dangers of polluting....), which takes us back to step one in a wonderful little cycle!

The learning cycle was the main focus of this first workshop of this year, and I was lucky enough to have two new volunteers visiting me this week in order to complete their training, and they helped me prepare and carry out this workshop today! Even though we had to get up pretty early to make it out to the school that was hosting this workshop by 7:45, we had a great time with the teachers from five local schools! Every Friday this month, I will be giving this same workshop to five more schools at a time, until the whole district has been trained. Workshops are best when they are packed with games, ice breakers, and illustrations of principles (as opposed to lecturing about the principles). Many people are not used to be asked to be active participants in workshops, so I decided to bribe people by offering prizes for participation, and it worked like a charm! It's also helpful that by this time I know the names of most of the teachers and principals around. We played "Pin the Kid on the Latrine", "Fruit basket", "Building Blocks of a Healthy School", sang some health songs, ate snacks (coffee, horchata, beans, tortillas, carne asada, cookies) provided by the host school...and of course spent a lot of time going over specific methods of organizing hand washing and teeth brushing, school cleaning, and inviting, health-focused classrooms. Afterward, the teachers from each grade planned a health lesson together and presented it to the rest of us (I won a mango in a nutrition game, and I LOVE mangoes!), and it was so encouraging to see the Learning Cycle applied immediately!

All in all, I love having workshops with the teachers, because they are so smart, nice, and hilarious!

Patio for drying coffee beans before roasting.

Coffee roasters.

One little coffee bean escaped harvest!

The five stages of coffee.

Drying the beans before roasting.

Today we had a chance to go to Antigua and round out Ryan's experience of Guatemala. We did a walking tour around town (self-guided) to some of the neat Colonial ruins, including a quick peak inside Casa Santo Domingo, which is an incredible hotel built into a ruined monastery. Then we headed to the artisan's market to pick up a last few gifts, and finished out the afternoon with tours of a coffee plantation and a jade factory.

http://www.azoteaestate.com/

http://www.casasantodomingo.com.gt/

Flat Stanley goes to Iximche!

Ryan came down for a spur of the moment visit, and arrived last Tuesday and will be here until Thursday morning. We have managed to cram in MANY activities, including the largest outdoor weavings market, visiting Lake Atitlan, learning how to make tortillas, eating as much "tipico" food as possible, hiking out into the boonies to deliver books and posters for health classes, eating much ice cream, and visiting the kaqchikel ruins at Iximche. Tomorrow we will be heading to Antigua to visit a coffee plantation, a jade workshop, and visit one last market before he heads home.

After looking high and low for dessert recipes that called for fresh coconut, I finally settled for taking an orange almond coffee cake recipe and tweaking it with the ingredients that I had available....And this is what we came up with! (also, note the adorable apron that Fatima has on....My sister-in-law made the two of us matching aprons this Christmas!)

Las Meras Pasteleras de Coco Cake: ½ cup butter, softened ½ cup white sugar 3 eggs ½ cup fresh coconut, slighted toasted ½ teaspoon vanilla extract 2 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda ½ teaspoon salt 2/3 cup coconut water ½ cup chocolate chips Topping: ½ cup loose brown sugar ¼ cup chopped pecans 2 – 3 tablespoons melted butter Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Thoroughly beat together butter and sugar with an electric mixer. Mix in eggs one at a time. Beat in coconut and vanilla extract. In a large bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and baking soda. With an electric mixer set to Low, alternately mix in egg mixture and 2/3 cup coconut water to make a batter. Stir in chocolate chips. Pour into greased pan, and top with brown sugar mixture. Bake 25 to 35 minutes in the preheated oven, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Silly, naive Bethany. She thought she could use this knife to get to the meat.

Aura, saving the day with her machete.

Fatima helped me catch the coconut water in the pan I'll try making curry in tomorrow.

About a year ago, my first market day experience on my own (without the guidance and general protection of Irma, my host mom) went less than well. Joanna and I had ventured out of our town to the next one which happens to be many times the size of our humble little hamlet, and therefore has a market day on Thursdays to die for. Well, that first time, I'm pretty sure we thought that we would die. We arrived at the market at 8 in the morning, since we had heard that the best produce was to be found then. After the market crushed us, suffocated us, assaulted our noses with very potent smells of fresh meat and dried fish, tried to pick our pockets, and thoroughly ripped us off in regards to fair prices (we like to call it "the gringa tax"), I wasn't sure if we would ever get the courage again to return. The next time we went back, we drug Ellen along as back-up support, and general "rope-shower" of the market. She stood behind us and told us when we needed to barter prices down more, where to eat the best squash-beef soup currently known to man, and showed us where the friendly lady who sells pineapple usually sits. Little by little, we learned how to efficiently plan our market day tours through the huge (maybe 30 blocks square) open air market, and since then, we have each developed our own preferences from who to buy tomatos from, eggs, fruit, and everything else we need to pick up for the week's groceries.

I hadn't gone to market since November, since I spent most of the month of December in the states. So today, when I went (just in time to get the squash soup, fresh), I made sure to start my shopping just as the vendors were beginning to think about packing up and going home. Whenever I wait until the middle of the day to start buying, not only are the prices better, but there are less people around to crowd you and jostle you around, and the vendors take a little time to chat with you. Sometimes I wonder if they're pulling my leg about certain things, so I usually double check their information with Aura whenever I get home... The thing is, no one has actually pulled my leg since last May! You have no idea how happy that makes me! Today I was pleased to hear that although the price of tomatoes had risen, the price of eggs had dropped drastically, that it's finally avocado season again, that oranges are so cheap that I bought enough to make a whole lot of fresh orange juice, and mango season is only two months out!

With Aura's encouragement (she works for the family that I live with as general housekeeper and somewhat of a nanny for Fatima) I bought my first coconut. She told me to make sure that it came peeled, so when I found the coconut vendor, I double checked that it was peeled. Looked peeled to me. When I got home, Aura and Fatima were already up to their elbows getting a certain candy/sweet underway, so I started the coconut process myself. Hahahahahahhaa. That's all I have to say about my attempts to get to the meat. Turns out that there were still two more layers of peel left to get through before you're "supposed" to drain the coconut water. Oops. I drained it before I had even peeled it at all. So Aura took over with her machete, and saved the day. The meat is DELICIOUS, and I'm about to go looking for some sort of coconut-chocolate cake or something to make this afternoon with it. The coconut water I will attempt to make chicken curry with tomorrow - we'll see how that turns out!

Here are the weavings that I finished up right before going home for Christmas... I couldn't post them before, since they were part of some gifts... After the craziness of school starting is over, I'm considering buying larger weaving sticks to make something new - people keep saying I should try my hand at making a huipil, which is a traditional blouse, but they look insanely hard to make!

For those of you who have heard of the latrine project that my sitemate has been working on since last May, here is a picture of two nearly-completed latrines! After several months of training and education on how to build and keep up these latrines, as well as writing grants and getting materials from the local government, construction finally began on January 8th. The process has been a little slower than expected, but the quality of the latrines is great, and everyone agrees that they are worth the effort. The families in the two communities that Ellen works in have previously used pit latrines, which unfortunately contaminate the communities' water supply, since the water table is so high. The latrines that are shown here are "Letrinas Aboneras", with two seperate compartments below. Each compartment has a hole that leads into it from above in the little house, and is designed so that the family uses one compartment at a time. The seat is built so that the urine is directed out of the latrine into another container, which can then be used in the fields (I'm really shaky on what it's used for - maybe in place of pesticides). After a BM, ash is thrown in, to help it dry out faster, thus making the latrine virtually odorless. Once a week, the compartment must be stirred around and compacted from above with a large stick to facilitate decomposition. Once the compartment is fairly full, the family moves the seat on top of the other compartment's hole, and begins the process again. After 4-6 months, the first compartment is ready to be emptied of the abono (manure), and can be used as fertilizer. Each household signed a contract with the local government that they would use these latrines as latrines (as opposed to storage sheds, or what have you), and if they do not, then they have to pay back the entire cost of the project.

Ellen observed that it was encouraging to her to see the women, especially in one community, really take the construction of the project into their own hands, and take both pride and responsibility in the entire process.

Dear Mrs. Jones, Having grown up on your very own Mrs. Jones’ Baked Beans, it was only natural that I would find a way to make them here in Guatemala, two years being too long to survive without their spicy-sweet solace on a hot day. Needless to say, alterations here and there in the recipe are necessary when making these beans abroad. This morning I tracked down a farmer in the market who sells dried white beans, and bought a pound. After bringing them home, they needed to be sifted through to make sure no rocks or bug-eaten beans slipped into the pot of water with bay leaves that I had prepared. Leaving them to soak for the rest of the morning, I walked over to Ellen’s, since she had just returned from the mountain-top aldea where a woman slaughters, stuffs and smokes her own sausage. As soon as I had picked up a pound of fresh sausages linked together, I headed to the park vegetable stand for some onions, sweet peppers and a jalapeño. Boiling the beans with bay leaves took a good three and a half hours, and by the time the beans were ready, I had sautéed the chopped up smoked sausage with the onions, peppers, and jalapeño. When they were all well-cooked-but-leaving-the-veggies-a-little-crispy, in went the ketchup, “salsa inglesa” (smells like Worcestshire, and hopefully is), vinegar, salt and brown sugar to simmer down to a tasty sauce for the beans. Mixing in the beans, I set it all aside for a couple hours to let the flavors mingle, and then baked it all through and through, while salivating at the kitchen table. In the end, bringing my little pyrex, full to the brim with this new kinds of Mrs. Jones’ Baked Beans to my old host family’s house as a contribution to the meal worked out quite well. The family had never had white beans made up that way, as they are usually eaten during Holy Week with fish. The beans were a hit!

The list of things alive or dead that no longer faze you includes:

men walking around with machetes;

bed bugs, fleas, the thought of lice munching on your head;

the rats in your ceiling, the mice on your floor, and the hugs spiders that crawl in;

sharing your bus seat with three other people;

going without a shower for three days because the town well isn’t working;

spending your whole Saturday hand washing your clothes in a cement pila, then waiting two or three days for them to dry – only to find that they are uncomfortably stiff because 11 months later, you still suck at getting the soap out;

the prospect of getting up at 6:30 in the morning to hike straight up a mountain to a school where the kids will probably scream at you and run away, having never seen someone so incredibly pale and so out of breathe;

eating variations of beans, eggs, tortillas, potatoes and tomatoes for months on end;

Less known symptoms that you have been here for quite some time include:

your phone calls home are often punctuated with “BeeeeeeEEEEP….silence” because you ran out of saldo, AGAIN, for no apparent reason;

you fondly reminisce about food you once ate, but now only dream of, and drive your sitemate insane with cravings while doing so;

you wonder if time is actually passing because the weather has been the same for the past year;

you think that tortillas sprinkled with salt constitutes a complete and healthy meal;

if you’ve ever thought that going more than three hours without a “refa” or snack is pure torture;

if you’ve ever sprinted down the street, chasing after the garbage truck with your month’s worth of bean cans and used toilet paper;

you think that walking from your house to the tortilla ladies’ house (more like tortilla goddesses) is sufficient exercise for a Sunday afternoon;

if you are the sole reason that there are no more snickers or hostess cupcakes left in ANY of the stores in town;

if going to market and bartering down the price of carrots every Thursday, then eating squash soup at a comedor afterwards is the highlight of your week;

if you’ve resigned yourself to answering to “¡Ay, Canche, Canchita!” in the streets

if your English grammar has reached such depths that you only feel competent speaking Spanglish;

if you say the following phrases, just for kicks, because you think they sound cool: “¡Saber!” (who knows), “¡Apurate vos!” (hurry up!), “Si, hombre.” (yeah, man), “Ah, vaya.” (oh, right, that’s fine), “Por si las moscas” (just in case), “chulo” (cute)

In spite of the many interesting challenges, the rewards are many fold:

Overwhelming support for your program from local authorities;

An adorable six year old who is counting down the days until you return (six year olds make great language teachers, too);

People greet you by name in the streets and wish you well;

The teachers finally know where you live, and acknowledge your existence;

People hand babies off to you to hold;

The neighbors have finally stopped staring at you every time you go out the front gate;

The bus drivers wait for you while you half-heartedly jog up the hill to catch up – hey now, don’t judge me, it’s the altitude…

The friends who have already visited, and those who plan on doing so this coming year 

....or at least that is what Ellen and I decided that the wedding we went to today was exactly like. One of the girls from my soccer team married the son of Dona Tish, who is the wonderful who took Ellen under her wing when she moved into town. Coincidentally, I live with her nephew's family. She is one of the four major matriarchs of our pueblo - and even if they don't rule the town in name, they are very much public figures that pull strings behind the scenes.

The wedding began with a long mass in the Catholic church in town,and you couldn't help but feel the enormity of the commitment to marriage during the ceremony, somber as it was. The celebration continuded at a reception at the local high school, complete with marimba music to dance to, and a delicious lunch of Estofada with tamalitos, rice, vegetable salad, and Rosa de Jamaica (cold hibiscus flower tea with sugar and cinnamon). Estofada is made out of give of take 7 different kinds of meat (more if you count it the Guatemalan way - which means counting roosters, hens and chickens as three different kinds of meat): usually rabbit, pork, beef, goat, chicken, duck, and lamb if you can find it. All the meat is thrown into a HUGE terra cotta pot and stewed over the fire for a day or more with bay leaves, thyme, cinnamon, onion, garlic, and a couple other things that I can never remember. It's quite savory, and very distinct, made for only the most special of occasions.

Fatima and Oralis were both flower girls, and adorable, as usual. The prettiness of Fatima's dress belies her personality a bit, I must say. I was not surprised to see her leading a posse of rag-tag kids around at the reception, wreaking small and clever havoc while hunting up adventures to keep themselves entertained.

Fabio was upgraded to a tiny tux for this wedding, as you can see him with his parents. After eight months of me cooing and cuddling with him whenever I see him, the kid (who knows, maybe ten months old or less?) is finally starting to recognize me outside of the house. What a cutie.

It's a lot more fun going to weddings and other social events around town now that we are well-acquainted with a fair number of people, and it's always nice to see everyone dressed up.

Here are the promised Kite Festival pictures from November 1st. Ellen and a few friends went to a nearby town to their festival, and took some great pictures of the incredibly large and elaborate kites. Also, check out the sweet corn on the grill - the cobs are HUGE! This corn is especially tasty with lime juice and salt on it.

Last week Ellen and I had an opportunity to travel to the sunny beaches of El Salvador for two days and one night with the teachers from our school district. It's the end of the school year here, and the teachers wanted to celebrate the beginning of vacation, so off we went! We left before the crack of dawn, drove about four hours, arriving just in time for breakfast. There was an amazing assortment of fresh fruits and juices at the place we stayed, and we took full advantage of that! We enjoyed the very warm ocean (at least 85 degrees), and hung out in the shade with copious amounts of sunscreen slathered on our bodies. It was fun to hang out with the teachers and my counterpart in a casual setting - not to mention the hot showers, food, and television....

As you can see from the picture, we had a few minor breakdowns on our chicken bus - which was our specially commissioned transport for the adventure...