It's hard to believe that I've been home for a month already! I spent some time with two friends from Peace Corps this past week, and it was so nice to have the chance to catch up and compare our post-PC experiences thus far. We're all enjoying being back in the US, spending time with family and friends, eating foods and visiting places that we missed. Despite talking to my host family a couple of times in the past month, at times Guatemala seems like a dream. Although there were days and weeks of my service that seemed to drag by ever-so-slowly, the entire two years went by faster than I could have imagined. And now that I'm back home, in the lap of luxury, it seems impossible that I could slide between these two worlds so easily. I spent two years in a drafty room, washing dishes and

Everyone wants to know how I'm adjusting, if it was a shock to move back to the US. But honestly, it hasn't been hard at all. Despite the fact that I lived a very different lifestyle in a very different country, things at home haven't changed too much. Sure, my baby cousins are bigger than the last time that I saw them, it's much colder than it was the last time that I was home in June, there is a Tim Horton's in Ithaca. Being isolated from the fast pace of technological advancements in the rest of the world has left me feeling completely lost when considering buying a new phone. (I was lucky enough to talk to a nice lady at Verizon yesterday who explained to me what 4G is).

As I'm writing this with the tv on in the background, a commercial just came on, the kind asking people to sponsor poor children. You know the kind I'm talking about, one that shows. "You'll probably never meet a child that lives in this poverty, see the results of malnutrition, or see the look of despair in their eyes." Yes, I have seen poverty and malnutrition. But the look of despair in a child's eyes? That's something that I haven't seen. I often think to myself that my two years among Guatemalans taught me so much more than I ever could have imagined. Of course I want to remember how to prepare pepian

I'm feeling rather overwhelmed by the attention that I'm getting lately! It seems that every group that I've worked with feels the need not just to thank me, but to make a big deal of my leaving. The thing is, I feel like they've taught me more than I could have ever taught them! And they've been so incredibly generous; they've shared with me their time, their homes, their families, their friendship, countless cups of extra sweet coffee, and innumerable heads of broccoli. I've been trying to express this to them and I really hope that they understand how truly grateful I am to them for all that they've shared with me.

As much as I'd like to slip away quietly, it seems like that is going to be impossible. Just about every group has or is going to have a despedida (a going away party) for me. The first was last Thursday in Pino Dulce. The kids and teachers planned a surprise lunch, decorated the classroom with balloons and streams, and brought two big cakes- one for me, and one for a girl in the class who turned 15 early that week. They weren't quite ready when I showed up, so some of the kids took me for a hike in the woods to kill some time. We got caught in a huge rainstorm, so we showed up to the party soaking wet. Ooops! They were worried that I was going to get mad at them, but I told them not to worry- it made for a very memorable afternoon! They gave me a certificate of recognition for my collaboration in the school, a student spoke on behalf of each grade to thank me, and then they all gave me a hug. Too sweet!

A wet goodbye hug in Pino Dulce.

On Saturday my neighbor hosted my favorite despedida so far. She invited me to come over in the morning to help make lunch, which was chow mein (for some reason it's really popular here...), salad, fruit platters, and custard for dessert. I had no idea who had been invited, but it ended up being all of our neighbors; with kids, probably about 40 people! It was also Children's Day, so they had a piñata for the kids. After lunch and the piñata, they cranked up the music (that's the sign of a good party here) and we danced: little kids, teenagers, and old people alike! It was fun, besides the fact that the ceiling was so low that I ran into a light bulb and broke it. Guess they'll never forget how tall I am! A few families ended up staying until 8:30 at night (almost the latest I’ve been out and about in my aldea), chatting, eating dinner and drinking homemade apple wine. A great day!

Me with my neighbor's grandkids.

Monday the kids and teachers at the middle school here in Soledad Grande threw me the worst planned despedida ever. One of the students told me on Saturday that she thought that they were planning to go to the park at 8am on Monday morning, and that I was invited. I talked to the teachers the night before, and they told me not until noon. But Monday morning I randomly ran a bunch of students outside a store in the middle of town, waiting for the teachers to come. We called the teachers, and they said they wouldn't be there until noon. So we went to my house to watch Harry Potter until the teachers got there. When they finally arrived, I told the students that I wanted to hear them give their presentations that I had assigned them the week before about the career of their choice. Turns out that none of them were prepared, so I had to give them time to get ready. After listening to a lot of complaining, they conceded to give their presentations, and three of the teachers came to listen and judge them. The winners were Nora, the lawyer, and Tatiana, the clothing designer. By that time lunch was served: grilled steak, salad (with veggies from the school garden!), re-fried beans, pasta salad and grape soda. Tuesday I made a quick trip to Jalapa to print pictures, then headed to a “surprise” despedida lunch with my main women’s group in Soledad Grande. I was actually the first one there (which wasn’t much of a surprise). The ladies served grilled steak, ramen noodle coleslaw (thank’s for the recipe Carol, the ladies love it!),rice and apple cake, which was delivered in an unconventional way (well, for an American at least!) Sofia on the way to lunch with her triple layer apple cake!

Wednesday I had a bit of a break from saying goodbye, and went to Las Ilusiones to try to make some hay silage with my host dad and his brother. It was a really long, drawn out process, which ended up in a pile of silage that would take my uncle about thirty seconds to chop in the chopper at home. For starters, they had to cut the hay, then carry it down a hill and across a creek to where they have the chopper (a small machine that’s pretty heavy to move). Then we put the chopped hay in grain sacks, and carried it another distance to where the truck was parked. The road was so muddy that the truck only made it part way up the hill to where they wanted to make the silage pile, so they had to transfer it to another truck and drive it to the silo. There they unloaded it, dumped it into the tarp lined corral that we’d built, and jumped on it for a while to compact it. Not all that efficient…Oh well, if nothing else they now understand how the process works and what they need to do to make it a bit more efficient. That night my host dad and I climbed the long hill back up to Soledad Grande (ok, actually, he climbed the hill and loaned me his horse!) at dusk, where we met my host mom and sister at our neighbor’s house for dinner.Nando cutting grass with his machete.

Thursday, it was back to Pino Dulce. My women’s group made chow mein for lunch (I’m telling you, this stuff is popular!), and then I headed to the school where my middle schoolers presented their country projects. I had divided them into six groups, and assigned each group a country. They had to make the country’s flag out of recycled materials, prepare a recipe that I’d given them, find the country on the map and present some basic info on the country. I was really quite impressed; although they didn’t remember all of the information, they all had everything else prepared. The teachers had invited the school supervisor for the county to come, and at the end he thanked me for my work in the school. I handed out diplomas to all of the kids, and tried not to cry as all the teenage boys pretended that they were crying. I’m really going to miss those kids!A HUGE pot of chow mein. These women sure don't mess around!Can you tell what countries they presented? I took the weekend to start to pack up my room and nurse a cold. I had originally planned to go visit some friends for the weekend, but staying home worked out ok. Having extra time to organize my things, plan for my vacations with Mom and Hannah and just rest helped me to feel more relaxed about finishing my Peace Corps service. There’s so much paperwork to hand in, so many logistics to figure out (like how I’m going to get myself, a backpack and two suitcases to Antigua on public transport), and so many loose ends to tie up before I leave Soledad Grande! Today (Monday) the health committee had a despedida dinner for me: chicken soup with rice. In typical chapin fashion, it started an hour late, and by the time we were finished eating it was getting dark. The president of the group kind of forced everyone to say a few words, so one by one they said their thank yous and goodbyes. I was doing fine until a couple of the women started to get weepy…and then of course it was my turn to say something. I’m not much of a crier, but they really had me choked up. The last guy who spoke is also a member of the church choir/band, and he thanked me for donating my guitar to them last week. He said that it’s a hermosura de instrumenta (a beauty of an instrument) and that they’re very thankful to me. Gosh, to think that he’s talking about the guitar that I wanted to break in half numerous times because it wouldn’t stay in tune. I bought it for about Q400 ($50) when I first got to site, and honestly didn’t use it all that much because I was SO frustrated by it. And to think that these people can’t thank me enough for giving it to them. Here I am, almost done with my Peace Corps service, and still finding myself completely humbled by these people who have so little, and yet are willing to share so much. It’s my second to last night in my room, and my it’s looking pretty dreary. The walls are bare, all the things that I’m going to take with me packed into my suitcases, the things that I’m giving away are stacked into piles according to the people that are coming to pick them up tomorrow. A little bit ago I gave my host family a bunch of photos that I’d taken of us over the past two years, and although my host mom tried to hide her tears from me, a couple splashed on the photos. And tomorrow is going to be worse… Leaving is going to be hard. But I have so much to look forward to! Catching up with my host mom from training, Mom coming on Saturday, Hannah coming the week after that, and then two weeks in Nicaragua with Erin, Kiera and Amy. And then home! Oh NY, how I miss you. And by NY, I mean not only the crisp fall air and the brightly colored leaves, but all of my friends and family that live there (and that live elsewhere in the USA, for that matter). Thank you SO much to all of you for your support over these past two years! The countless emails, cards, letters and phone calls, full of encouragement, really helped me through some difficult days. Without you guys, this wonderful adventure would have been difficult one! See you SOON!

I'm down to 18 days, and I'm not sure how to feel about it. On the one hand, I'm ecstatic for Mom and Hannah to come and visit me, to travel in Nicaragua with some of my best PCV buddies, and most of all, to go HOME! But on the other hand...I almost don't want to leave. Ok, no, that's a lie, I do want to leave. I've thoroughly enjoyed my two years here, but it's time to move on. Many of the women that I work with have been teasing me lately, asking why I don't just get married and live in Soledad Grande forever. I told them that I just haven't found a guy that's tall enough yet (well, a couple of other reasons came to mind, as you can imagine). One of my favorite ladies, Marina, said that wasn't her son almost as tall as I am? Well, yes, almost, but he's too young. Her solution to the problem? Since he's still young, there's still a chance that he'll grow a little more! Perfect. Now I just need to wait until he's old enough to legally get married!

I have almost every day left in site planned out; so much to do, so little time! My last activities and lessons with my groups and classes, a final round of chicken vaccinations, one last batch of bread in Las Ilusiones, one more batch of jam. And although I'm not having a going away party for myself, I've heard whispers in various groups, so I think at least a couple of my groups are planning a despedida lunch for me. Fun!

Another thing that's high on my list of things to do is get rid of most of my stuff. Obviously my furniture and dishes can't come back to the US with me, and a lot of my clothes have seen better days (back when they weren't faded and full of holes!) It doesn't seem like it should be hard to find new homes for my things; lots of people have been asking me if I'm going to sell my things, since that's what the previous volunteers did. And that's what I'm planning to do too, either sell or give away almost everything. But for some reason, it's kind of getting on my nerves, having everybody ask for my things. Maybe it's the way that they ask: "Aren't you going to leave me a recuerdo?" (A memory, or a souvenir). I'd like to think that the time that we spent together was enough of a memory! Maybe because they've been doing it since I got to site (literally, as soon as I would buy something, people would be telling me to sell it to them when I left). I've had at least 7 people ask for my stove, upwards of 10 ask for my rain boots. It's kind of ridiculous. What's even more ridiculous is that I start feeling bad that I can't give stuff to everyone! Oh well. I just need to remind myself that I didn't come here to provide these people with my things.

Last week was field based training for the new group of volunteers. They came out to my site on Wednesday to learn how to make homemade cheese and how to make and can strawberry and pineapple carrot jam. It was a lot of fun to get to know the people who are going to continue the food security project here in Guatemala, and a little crazy to think that I was in their shoes two years ago! Sal, our boss, borrowed my Guatemala map to show them where their possible sites are, and I couldn't help but remember how excited and nervous I was when he gave us the same talk. A couple of the trainees exclaimed about my site, and wanted to know if they could replace me. Unfortunately for them, nobody is going to end up here, as I asked Sal not to replace me. I've had a fulfilling service in Soledad Grande, but feel that a volunteer would have a bigger impact in a site that has never received a volunteer.

Ok, time to get some work done- only one more Close of Service report left!

I've always loved to read. When I was a kid, I read constantly. Every summer I participated in the Reading Program at the T-burg library, keeping a list of all the books that I read. Dad was always sarcastically scolding me, "Libby, get your nose out of that book! I told you to quit reading!" Yet as life started getting busier, I had less and less time to read. By the time I was in college I probably only read a handful of books a year, during school vacations. Perhaps that's why I've enjoyed reading so much during my Peace Corps service-I've had more free time to read than I have had in years. Sure, I work a lot. But then I come home, and there's not too much to do, no TV to watch. I never leave my house after dark, not only because it would be "culturally unacceptable", but because there's nowhere to go. And it's usually so cold that the only place I want to be is in bed! But since I can't go to sleep at 8pm every night, bed is a good place to read too. I also spend ridiculous amounts of time on public transportation, waiting for people to show up, waiting for appointments, etc. I might just have gone crazy on many occasions if I hadn't had a book to keep me occupied. Now where am I getting all these books, you might ask? No, I didn't bring an entire suitcase of books with me from home! At our office we have an amazing library of books brought to Guatemala by volunteers since PC has been here- 48 years! So every time I go to the office, I switch out the books I've read and bring a couple new books back to site.

The thing that strikes me as strange about all this reading is the fact that NOBODY else reads in Guatemala. Well, I'm exaggerating, of course. But not buy much. The literacy rate is only 69% in Guatemala, and lower for women. I think only about half of the women that I work with can read. Asking them copy a recipe or read a short paragraph often turns out to be much more difficult than I'd planned. Each letter is written with painstaking slowness, each word sounded out syllable by syllable. But what can I expect? Many women didn't attend school at all, those that did were lucky to reach sixth grade. And I don't have a whole lot of faith in the Guatemalan education system either, so reaching sixth grade might be more like third or fourth grade in the US.

Sometimes I wonder what Guatemalans must think of me, what with all the reading I do. I mean, I've literally NEVER seen a Guatemalan reading a novel. Never. A couple of times I've gotten excited when I've seen a person on a bus reading a book. But it always turns out to be the Bible or some kind of religious literature. So I wonder, do they assume that I'm reading the Bible as well?

Just for kicks, I've been keeping a list of the books I've read in Guatemala. I posted it on the sidebar of my blog so that you can see what I've been reading. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to make it to 100, like I used to try to do every summer. But back then, all I read were Nancy Drew and The Babysitter's Club. Though I'll admit that not everything I've read in my time here has been quality literature, *cough*Twilight*cough, at least they've all been over 100 pages!

Yup, that's right. The countdown on my computer desktop reads "49" today. Or in other words, I have only 49 more days as a Peace Corps volunteer! How crazy is that? Last week I attended our COS conference- a three day meeting for all of the volunteers from my training group, to tell us what we need to do to wrap things up and start preparing ourselves for our return home. The conference took place at a nice hotel on the outskirts of Antigua. It was a refreshing and relaxing three days. Three days of hot showers, good food, and lots of time spent with friends, reflecting on the past two years and looking forward to what's next. It was bittersweet, really, since it was the last time I'll see some of them. But it was definitely a productive couple of days, since COSing (umm, I guess that would be Close of Service-ing) isn't exactly a simple process. I came away with a rather long to do list: take a language exam, attend numerous doctor's appointments, complete reports about my service, schedule my flight home, consider buying PC health insurance, update my resume... This is going to mean a lot of computer time. Ugh. On top of that is everything that I want or have to do in my site before leaving: continue work as usual for the next month (while working around elections and independence day...both which are sure to keep things from running smoothly), begin to wrap things up with my women's groups and schools, make diplomas for my students and a recipe book for my women's groups, sell/give away everything that I've accumulated over these two years, and say a million goodbyes.If I allow myself to think about all of this at the same time, I'm going to get overwhelmed. So instead, I think I'll try to take these next 50 days one day at a time.

Our training group at COS

Realizing that I have so little time left has encouraged me to make the most of the time I have left. Here are a couple of highlights from the past week:

Having a blast running around like kids at Xocomil water park with friends after COS conference.

Hearing Emelin beg her daddy for a ride on his new horse every morning and every night, and watching her face light up when he gives in.

Teaching my ladies how to make icing so that they can now make and decorate their own cakes (they were thrilled!)

Falling asleep to rain on my tin roof. I'm really going to miss it. But I guess if I miss it too much back in NY, my parents will probably let me sleep in their garage :)

First, as promised, here are a couple of pictures from feria this past weekend.

Elotes locos (crazy corn on the cob)! Personally, I prefer it before it's slathered in mayonnaise, ketchup and hot sauce (notice the huge tubs of condiments).

A stand of typical Guatemalan candies, including my favorite- candied coconut!

Carmen, Des, Sara and I all ready for the big noche vaquera (cowboy night): a rodeo followed by a dance.

Now here are some pictures of broccoli harvest. I spent two mornings last week helping my host family. Broccoli is the main source of income here in my village; with the chilly weather, it grows great. Broccoli takes three months from planting the seedlings to harvest, so many men get in two harvests during the rainy season, and if they have irrigation, one in the dry season. Although some men grow broccoli to sell in the local market, the majority work with export companies. The broccoli is cut up into pieces at one of the maquilas (factories, if you will) here in the village, and then transported by truck to the capital, where it is frozen, packaged, and exported mainly to El Salvador and the USA. So next time you buy a bag of broccoli, check the country of origin! I know one of the export companies sells to Hanover Foods (based in Hanover, PA). Actually I just looked at their website, and it says that Hanover purchased ALCOSA, a broccoli exporting company in Guatemala in 1975 in order to ensure vegetables year round. Interesting, huh?

A nice head of broccoli.

Nando cutting broccoli and tossing it to Sole.

The sack where Sole is packing the broccoli.

Sole tying up the first sack- that day they got almost 40!

These sacks are heavy- 130 or 140 pounds, but the only way to get them to the truck is on your back!

Nando tying a load of sacks on his truck for the drive to the "acopio"- the place where the broccoli is weighed by the export company and loaded on trucks which take it to the "maquila" or to the capital.

"Ya no tienen gracia ya!" My host mom exclaimed to me yesterday afternoon (they're not even funny anymore!).

We were talking about the girls in our village who have moved in with their boyfriends lately, and the boys who have brought their girlfriends home from neighboring villages. I think I've mentioned this before, the strange culture of young people just moving in together instead of getting married first. Hmm, put that way, it doesn't sound so strange. That happens in US all the time. But in Guatemala, and in my village in particular, the people are overwhelmingly Catholic and conservative. And the young couples don't move into their own house somewhere. They move into the boy's parents' house! It may be years and years before they move out on their own, and it's often just to a one room house built next to the parents' house. Sole could only think of THREE men in our village who had their own house built before they got married or brought their girlfriend home.

The girls seem to go in waves. I can imagine that it would take some gumption to just up and move out of your parents' house as a young girl, especially in this culture where independence is not encouraged, and respecting your parents' is so important. So it does kind of make sense that a girl might get up the nerve to move in with her boyfriend if her best friend did it the week before. But it's depressing. And it always seems to happen when I'm gone. For example, I was hardly here at all in June. And talking with my host mom yesterday I found out that my 18 year old neighbor brought a girlfriend home, his cousin (also 18) moved in with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend is eighteen, and has 7 siblings, one of whom also has his girlfriend living at home. They live in a one room shack with a dirt floor. So that means 12 people living in one room. What could possess the girl?!?! She was a student in middle school, four months away from graduating. Two other girls in her class have recently dropped out of school and moved in with their boyfriends. And worst of all, according to the latest gossip, a 12 year old girl ran away with her boyfriend, was dragged home by her dad, and is now pregnant. And in Pino Dulce, an 18 year old girl who is my best friend and biggest supporter in the community, moved in with her boyfriend in a village an hour away. I always imagined that she would finish middle school, keep studying, and get a great job eventually. Guess I was wrong. It's very rare the girl whose boyfriend allows her to keep studying once they're living together.

I'm so happy that higher education is becoming more accessible in rural Guatemala. Three years ago, a kid had to travel to town every day to study past sixth grade. Now they can walk there, making it much more convenient and less expensive for their parents. But if people don't start taking it more seriously, Guatemala isn't going to get ahead. Dropping out of 7th, 8th or 9th grade to move in with your boyfriend and start having kids should not be acceptable. And although it's not exactly condoned, nothing is being done to stop this trend!

Here are some pictures of my middle schoolers a year ago. They look like kids, don't they? Well I was looking through these tonight and was shocked by just how many girls have dropped out of school.

Theresa, red jacket with pink stripes.

Magdalena, standing to the left of Theresa.

Pilar, far right. Paola, crouched on left.

Iliana, brown jacket in center.

Well I guess that's only five, but still, five girls out of twenty three is 22%! That is ridiculous!

After a wonderful trip home in June, I was feeling a little down in the dumps upon my return to site. I know how lucky I am to have this opportunity to live and work in Guatemala. I've made great friends (both Guatemalan and American), traveled to some beautiful places, learned SO much about the life and culture of Guatemalans, and hopefully made a difference to some people through what I've taught them. I live with a caring, easygoing and funny family, in a breathtaking village on the top of the highest mountain in the eastern part of Guatemala. Yes, my current method of doing laundry is scrubbing my clothes a rock, and no, the water doesn't come on more than twice a week...but hey, its raining enough every day to fill the pila. (Which is also unfortunately enough to encourage a stubborn and reappearing crop of mold to grow on my cinder block walls) Sound depressing? Well honestly, I don't mind it. For the most part, the good outweighs the bad in my life here in Guate. I wasn't expecting a washing machine or running water when I moved here. What was really getting me down my first week back in site was the fact that my family and close friends are just so darn far away. And even though I'm nearing the end of my service here, the transition between America and Guatemala is still a little hard. "See you in four months" was so easy to say as I packed my bags and headed to the airport, but four months seemed like a really long time as I unpacked my bags and scrubbed mold off the walls.

Luckily I was able to cheer myself up with a fun-filled weekend shorty after returning to Guate: the Peace Corps 4th of July party, followed by a short trip to Monterrico, a black sand beach on the Pacific. A group of volunteers puts the party together every year, and it was a definite success. Hamburgers, hot dogs, a whipped cream pie eating contest, a bake off, a talent show: truly an all-American afternoon. I even got the chance to sing the national anthem in a quartet with some other volunteers. It was the first time I've sung in four part harmony since...high school? Yikes! It was a lot of fun!

Trisha, Erin and I sporting our red, white and blue at the 4th of July party!

Yum! Fresh fish for dinner!

But now I'm back from the beach (miraculously without any bug bites or a sunburn!) and happy to say that I'm excited about work. I have a lot to look forward to in these last 3 or so months. Apple season is right around the corner, which means coming up with some yummy recipes to teach my women's groups (apple pie, apple cake, broccoli and apple salad...so many possibilities). By the way, if anybody has any good apple recipes, send 'em my way! Our school gardens are growing by leaps and bounds with all this rain, so soon I'll be teaching new recipes to my students. I've been doing some geography lessons in the school where we painted the world map, so I'm planning to do a couple of cultural days where I teach a lesson on a certain country and then we make a recipe that is typical in that country, using veggies from the garden. The next round of chicken vaccinations is coming up in Pino Dulce and I'm hoping to train Carmen, one of my favorites in the group there, to take over vaccinating once I'm gone. My host mom from training, is planning to visit me in my site in two weeks, which should be fun.

Also right around the corner is feria, or the annual fair, in town. In most of Guatemala feria means a midway filled with all kinds of games, a Ferris wheels, and plenty of other rides that may or may not meet safety regulations. You can always expect an assortment of tipico (typical) fair food, though you won't find the hamburgers, hot dogs, salt potatoes, steamed clams, corn on the cob, funnel cake, and fried dough that we enjoy at the NYS fair. More common here are elote loco: corn on the cob on a stick covered with mayonnaise, hot sauce and ketchup, chicharones: fried pig skin, gringas: greasy flour tortillas filled with meat and cheese, shucos: sandwiches filled with grilled meat and onions, and an assortment of sweets such as coconut and tamarind candies. I am really only a fan of the last three. But the best part of living out here in the eastern part of Guate, the land of cowboy hats, horses, and holsters, the Wild Wild East, if you will, is that we also get a jaripeo: a rodeo! The bull riders aren't very good (they don't even bother timing them because they fall off so fast) but it's always a good time.

A couple of changes that I noticed since I got back:

My neighbor's house, which was recently painted to support one of the current candidates for mayor. (Elections are in September and campaigning is already full force).

The new paint job on the school. Hot pink is not an improvement over green, if you ask me.

Life has been kind of crazy lately. The rainy season has started again, though luckily not with as much of a bang as hurricane Agatha last year! Along with the rain comes the time to plant gardens and crops here on the mountain. Corn is about four inches high now here, and all the men are weeding their corn (with a hoe, or course, no roundup!) and planting broccoli seedlings. I've been working with my women's groups and schools to get their gardens planted. A few weeks ago my middle schoolers and I got caught in a rainstorm while working outside, and to keep them under control while we waited out the rain, I tried to teach them the names of the vegetables that we were planting in English. "Como se dice repollo?" (How do you say cabbage?), I asked them. Silence. Then one little boy, scrunching up his face and thinking really hard, finally shouted out "Rechicken!". In Spanish cabbage is repollo, and chicken is pollo. I have no idea what the word chicken is doing in the word cabbage, but I was impressed that the kid was able to come up with that, however wrong it was! Pretty funny.

While keeping busy in site, I've also traveled a bit lately. Two weeks ago I visited Coban and Semuc Champey in the department of Alta Verapaz. I stayed at my friend Kamille's house with Amy and Erin, all girls from my training class. On Sunday we cheered on Erin in the Coban International Half Marathon, and then Amy and I headed to visit Semuc Champey, a beautiful series of natural pools of crystal clear water.

This week I spent time at the Peace Corps office helping teach some workshops for the food security volunteers who have been in site for six months. As I hosted this group in my site during their field based training last October, it was pretty cool to see how much they've grown as volunteers in that time. The first day I worked with Alene to teach a short workshop on communication to volunteers and their counterparts; while we all know how to communicate in theory, cultural differences always make it more difficult here! The second day Alene and I tag teamed to teach about food preservation: she taught the group to make a solar dryer out of cardboard boxes while I taught them how to make and can pickled beets.

Now I'm back in site trying to get caught up and then some, all the while completely distracted by the fact that I'm coming home next week! Yay!

On Monday I celebrated a wonderful American tradition with some of my women's groups...

...an Easter egg hunt!

The week leading up to Easter is a very big deal here in Guatemala. Last year I spent a big part of the week traveling, so this year I decided to stay in site and see what happens in Soledad Grande for Easter. The week can basically be summed up like this: make semitas (sweet bread made from whole wheat flour), eat semitas, go to church, repeat. And that's about what I did too! I spent Tuesday and Wednesday baking with some of my women's groups, and learned how to make two different variations of this tasty Semana Santa treat. One was made of wheat flour, sugar, eggs, and yeast, while the other also included a sourdough base and ricotta cheese to make it much more moist. Both were delicious!

Working on dough for semitas in Las Ilusiones

Thursday I spent most of the day preparing for Emelin's birthday lunch on Friday. I made two cakes (carrot pineapple and lemon) and helped Sole chop vegetables, pluck chickens and clean the house. On Friday morning we got everything ready for lunch (chicken soup, rice, melon smoothies, and coleslaw), then headed to church for a service commemorating the suffering of Jesus on the path to the cross. It was really quite beautiful. They had set up 14 altars made of colored sawdust, flowers, palm leaves, and candles. Starting at the church we followed a procession around to each altar, stopping to read scripture and pray at each one. The first altar on the procession.

As soon as the service was over, we rushed home to Emelin's birthday lunch. Sole originally wanted to celebrate Emelin's birthday with a small lunch, just the four of us. But then she decided to invite Emelin's grandparents, which meant she had to invite her aunts and uncles and cousins as well...so we ended up having a nice "small" group of 26 people!

Happy Birthday Emelin!

By the time the soup was eaten, the candles blown out, wishes made, cake eaten, and dishes washed, it was time to head back to church. Sole joked that the only thing that Guatemalans are on time for all year is this service on Good Friday: it's at 3pm, the hour of Christ's death. Saturday gave us some time to relax after all of our scurrying about the night before, but at 4pm there was a candlelight vigil and mass, which I went to as well. The best part was actually after the service: they had a bingo tent set up behind the church! I came pretty close to winning a huge plastic bucket. Darn my bad luck...

Easter morning dawned surprisingly clear and bright, after a week of off and on rain showers. I went to town to visit my neighboring volunteers, and decided to go to mass. I mean, after all, I can't miss church on Easter Sunday! But strangely, there wasn't anything very special about the service. It seems like Guatemalans put most of their Semana Santa efforts into the days leading up to Easter. They celebrate the resurrection on Saturday night, not Sunday morning. But nevertheless, it was interesting to see what customs people have here, and wonderfully relaxing to hang out with my friends!

After all the excitement of Semana Santa, I was glad to get back to work on Monday (and kind of happy that the semitas were all gone, and that I wasn't going to be expected to go to church every day anymore!) It was especially nice to start working in the schools again- apparently the teacher strike is over, and things are back to normal. I'm excited to start working on my school gardens since the rainy season is eminent. Especially in Soledad Grande. Last year we got permission to plant our garden on part of the school's land, but the elementary kids did a wonderful job of stomping on, pulling up, or otherwise ruining everything that we planted. This year I have permission to use a nice little fenced in store yard practically next door to the school. Hopefully things will go better there!

Snack time in El Desvio.

Things are a little off kilter here in Soledad Grande lately. I was really getting into the swing of things working in my schools again since classes started in February: getting to know the new students, teaching about nutrition and dental hygiene, preparing to plant our gardens in May when it starts to rain again. Then two weeks ago one of the teachers in Pino Dulce pulled me aside to inform me that "all the teachers in Guatemala are going on strike tomorrow". My first question was, of course, why? "We haven't been payed yet this year". Ok, I guess that sounds like a decent reason. My second question was, how long? "We have no idea, at least two weeks". I realized that the kids were going to be out of school for at least three weeks, since Holy Week was in three weeks (there is always vacation the week leading up to Easter). Sigh. So here we are in the second week of the strike...and who knows when the kids will be back in school! The two teachers in El Desvio, however, were still giving classes last week. So on Tuesday we harvested some Swiss Chard from the school garden, and I taught the mothers who were assigned to make the kids' snack that day how to make a healthy snack. A couple kids refused to eat it because they "don't eat vegetables", but in general it went over pretty well!

I'm working on it...

Another thing disrupting my normal schedule (and the schedule of everybody else in Soledad Grande) is the lack of water. Normally the potable water comes on once every four days for a few hours. The village owns a few springs that feed into a big tank, and then they use an electric pump to pump water to all the houses. That doesn't sound like very much, but everybody has barrels to save water in, and my family even has a little tank. So even now, when it hasn't rained since November, we don't suffer too much from lack of water. Until the water pump broke. Two weeks ago. Now everybody (and by everybody I mean all the women and girls) have to walk to springs or creeks to bath, wash clothes, and carry drinking water back to their houses. And now a lot of people are complaining of stomach problems, a result, I'm assuming, of drinking spring water without boiling it. This is all a little more rustic than my Peace Corps experience has been so far! But it could be worse. There's a clean spring about 15 minutes from our house. The only problem is that I can't carry a jug of water on my head with no hands. But hey, at the rate things are moving, I'll probably be a pro by the time they fix the pump and we have water at our house again!

Early morning sunshine on a weekend walk from Soledad Grande to San Antonio Las Flores.

Blackberry picking with two of my favorite girls: Lacey and Leslie.

These are a bunch of kids from Stephen's neighborhood anxiously awaiting his arrival at a surprise housewarming party we had for him last weekend. Unfortunately...he wasn't very surprised. Apparently when you invite a bunch of kids to a surprise party, it doesn't stay a surprise for very long.

Here are some random thoughts and sites from the past week.

Last week at the produce market in Jalapa I found two rare finds: spinach and brussel sprouts! Yum! I'd never seen either of them in Guate before. And as much as I love broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage, it's always nice to have a little more vegetable variety in my diet. Mom sent me some brussel sprout seeds, which I'm excited to give a try in my garden this year.

On Sunday I went to two parties: a quince anos in the morning, and a 50th wedding anniversary in the afternoon. Both parties were preceded by a mass, so I got a double dose of church. The first mass was in the cathedral in Jalapa, and was surprising in a number of ways. First, it started at 9am, sharp. Since when does anything start on time in Guatemala? (Apparently that's what the mom of the birthday girl was thinking too, because she went last minute to buy a dress for one of the damas and missed the first part of the service). The next surprise came during the New Testament reading, which was the story of Jesus's transfiguration. Instead of just reading it, they acted it out in the front of the sanctuary, and when they got to the part where Jesus is transfigured in front of his disciples, the man who was playing Jesus threw aside his blue robe to reveal blazing white pajamas, and they actually set off firecrackers! In the church! Only in Guatemala...

Both of the parties were pretty similar to, well, every other party that I've been to here in my village. Here's how it goes. You get to the house where the party is, find somewhere to sit and chat. If it's a big event, there will be balloons and streamers hanging up, and at least part of the floor will be covered with pine needles. Soon you'll be handed a square or rectangular Styrofoam plate holding three tortillas, rice, and some kind of meat in a red sauce. Then a Styrofoam cup holding super sweet coffee. Everybody eats in silence. Somebody brings out a couple of grain sacks to put the dishes in. If there's no dance, then people go home after a bit. If there is a dance, the guest of honor will dance the first dance, and then the everybody else starts to dance too. However, there wasn't much dancing at either of the parties yesterday. A breaker blew at the first party after only a couple of songs, and then two drunk guys got in fight serious enough to warrant pulling out there machetes. Luckily, I had already left by that time. The second party started late (for parties here), and I went home after dinner. Walking alone in the dark here is not recommended here, especially Sunday night when there are bolos (drunks) out.

One thing that I really find amusing about parties here is how much people like to videotape them. Although most people here don't have cameras, they always find somebody to come and record the party. What do they tape? Well, people eating silently. Then people dancing. Who watches these movies?

Here's a picture of Laurita, one of my favs from Pino Dulce, at her first communion last Thursday. Yup, that's right, I went to mass not once, not twice, but THREE times this week! I'm just about to turn Catholic.

This week I've had the pleasure of working with a group of students from Michigan State University, who are here on an Alternative Spring Break trip. They all go to the same church, which organizes various mission trips every year. The first trip to Guatemala was organized by a volunteer in a site near me three years ago, and as volunteers have come and gone, organizing the trip got passed to me this year.

The finished product!

At first I wasn't sure what to do with them, but quickly settled on the idea of doing a world map project in one of the elementary schools that I work in. Rural schools in Guatemala are severely lacking in resources: there are no maps to be seen in the classrooms. And most Guatemalans can't even find Guatemala on a world map! So I thought this would be a great way to leave something lasting at the school that will help with the education of students for many years to come. It's in a prime location, right near a main road, so everybody in the community as well as passersby can easily see it. Also, the two teachers at the school (Julio and Hilda) have been very supportive of my work in the school, and I thought they would be easy to work with. And sure enough! Julio gave me the keys last week when I came to work with the kids, and assured me that he would have the school hooked up to electricity when I needed it.

Saturday Desiree (a volunteer who works nearby) came to help me paint the background. We scrubbed the wall with soapy water to get rid of the muddy soccer ball prints, then marked out a rectangle with masking tape. Unfortunately, the directions I was following were WAY off on the amount of paint we needed. We used up all of the white and half of the blue to paint that I had bought just to paint the ocean...and still left some parts a little bare.

Sunday evening the Michigan State crew arrived, about six hours late and with no luggage! (Luckily

they were able to get their luggage the next day with no trouble). After dinner in Parque Pino Dulce, I took them to the school, just a five minute walk away, to trace the map. With my laptop and a projector that I borrowed from another teacher, I thought we were all set to go. (Getting the projector the day before had been a small ordeal, requiring me to chase after not one but two buses!) But the electricity wasn't on when we got to the school. I ran over to the house of the neighbor who was supposed to hook us up for the night, to find the house dark. I hated to wake anybody up, but it was only 8pm, so I yelled "Buenas noches" a couple of times and soon had don Abel up and connecting the school to his electricity. Phew! In about an hour we had the whole map traced!

Monday morning it was up early to start painting. After getting the students started with yellow and red paint, I headed to town to buy more paint. By the end of the day all of the countries were painted in, plus a white border! Amazing!

Tuesday was more of the same, but even more fun because it was Carnival, or Fat Tuesday. Guatemalan children like to celebrate by cracking eggshells filled with confetti over each others' heads, and the kids at the school were eager to share this custom with us:) We got the kids involved by tracing and painting in their hands in a border across the top of the map. It required a bit of maneuvering to get the kids up that high, but it turned out great! We also numbered the countries 1-186, added the name of the school, the year, a Michigan State symbol, and the Peace Corps symbol...and voila! Mission accomplished! As for the accuracy of the map...there may have been a few Pacific islands omitted, but hey, we did the best we could with out limited resources:) The maps that we were using to label the countries weren't all that great (too small and a bit blurry), which made it a bit hard to label everything. I think that in the end it turned out pretty awesome! What do you think? A big shout out to the MSU students who made this world map a reality! Mil gracias!

Ariel and I trying to label the countries...

My second birthday in Guatemala didn't start out with a bang like last year. But honestly, I wasn't to sad that I wasn't woken up at 4:00am with firecrackers in my front yard like last year. It was a Monday just about like any other day. In the morning I prepared materials for my meetings this week and helped a group of women who make jam to sell, and in the afternoon I taught at the middle school and later attended a meeting with the village's health committee. When I came home, my host mom had prepared a special birthday dinner: chicken with a delicious red sauce (tomatoes, miltomates, red peppers, sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds are the secret ingredients) and rice with veggies. I knew she wouldn't have time to make a cake that day, so I took the liberty of making my own cake. Mango cake is definitely one of my new favorites! Probably my favorite part of the day was my host dad singing the Guatemalan version of Happy Birthday to me "Ya queremos pastel...." (We want cake!).

Tuesday morning I got up early with my host mom to go pick peas with her and her brother, sister, brother in law and nieces and nephews. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, though the pea plants were soaked from a rare summer rain the day before. Being my graceful self, I promptly slipped and fell on the slick ground and was soon soaked all the way through my jeans. We picked from 6:30am until 5:30pm with an hour or so break for lunch. Phew! It's funny, I've always loved to pick fruits and veggies: cherries, blackberries, strawberries, sweetcorn, you name it. The one thing I've always hated picking is peas. But somehow I enjoyed myself! It might have something to do with the fact that the peas are staked, so you can actually walk instead of crawl through the pea patch to pick...(just saying Dad!)

The other part of my birthday celebration didn't happen until Friday. I've been helping out the aforementioned group of women that makes jam since I moved here. They went to a workshop to learn how to make and can jam about a year and a half ago, and now there are eight of them who get together once a month or so to make jam and sell it. They're some of my favorite women here in my aldea- always laughing and joking . When I saw them on Monday they said that they had forgotten about my birthday, but that they wanted to make it up to me with a lunch sometime that week. What a nice end to the week!

This coming week promises to be a busy one. A group of college students are coming for an alternative spring break trip, and will be working with me to paint a world map on one of the schools that I work in. Wish us luck!

February sure is flying by, so I figured I had better get in one last post before the end of the month!

Last week was a very busy week for me. First, I volunteered to help translate for a medical mission in Jalapa. This group of about 60 doctors, surgeons, dentists, nurses, pharmacists and translators has been coming to Jalapa for 17 years or so. The public hospital in Jalapa turns over a big part of the facilities to them for a whole week. They arrive to set up on Sunday. Monday through Friday they attend to patients- this year over 3,000! Then Saturday they head home. Last year some other volunteers told me that they were going to translate, so I tagged along for a couple of days. Luckily this year I was able to be there for longer. And what a great experience! I was so impressed with the dedication of all the people that come. Because it's not just the one week that they are in Jalapa that they are devoting time to the people of Jalapa; they spend countless hours fund raising, buying, organizing and packing medical supplies, recruiting new people to volunteer, following up with difficult cases....and the list goes on.

There's not always a lot that can be done for patients that come in with the most common complaints in Guatemala: heart burn (from drinking lots of coffee and eating spicy or greasy foods, and not drinking enough water) and aches and pains (from the very physically demanding lifestyle). But those patients receive lots of good advice, as well as some aspirin and vitamins, so at least they feel like they're getting something. People spend the night on the sidewalk waiting in line in order to be seen the next day! For those with more serious problems, the doctors are able to do simple surgeries that don't require much follow up (hysterectomies, gallbladder removals, pulled teeth, removals of cysts, etc). There was even one little girl who had a sixth finger removed! (It was infected). When the doctors are confronted with a problem too big for them to solve during the week, they talk with the local social worker to help people get appointments with specialists.

Though I'm generally more interested in medicine when it's applied to cows and horses, it was really interesting to help out. Although sometimes it was a little uncomfortable to translate a private conversation between a doctor and patient, it was also quite fascinating. I learned a lot about common health problems here in my area, many of which are related to nutrition. The doctors also gave me some new ideas for how to approach these problems with my students and women's groups.

Speaking of nutrition, I just read an interesting article about malnutrition in Guatemala:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/latin_america/jan-june11/nutrition_02-16.html

While I wasn't helping out at the medical mission, I was in Antigua at our Project Review meeting. Projects in Peace Corps are developed for a certain period of time- our Sustainable Agriculture Project Plan ends in December of this year. So last week a group composed of PC volunteers and staff as well as counterparts and other people who work with PC met to review the Sustainable Ag Project and come up with ideas to guide its remodeling for the next ten years. I was lucky enough to be invited, and to be able to bring along Francisca, one of my favorite group members! She's also my host dad's mother, so she's kind of like a mother/grandmother figure to me too:) When the meeting started, I looked around and realized that she was the only villager in the room! All the other Guatemalans worked for NGO's- meaning they live in cities or towns and work in offices. Whoa! How uncomfortable and out of place must she be feeling? (Actually, I first thought that the night before as we checked into the hotel and I had to show her how to use the key card to get into her room. This, mind you, is a woman who lives an hour walk uphill from the main road, in a house with no electricity or running water). But I was so proud of her- she took it all in stride. While Guatemalan village women often tend to be timid, she participated and shared her opinion. And she also survived two days without eating tortillas- something that most Guatemalans would declare impossible!

Vanessa looking over her family's coffee as it dries in the yard.

First of all, Jorge is doing much better. He came home after a week in the hospital, after a surgery to remove coagulated blood from his head (or something like that, I didn't get a very medical explanation). Now he's recuperating at home with his family- one of his eyes is still partially swollen shut, and he still has a lot of aches and pains, but he gets his stitches out on Monday! Poco a poco (little by little).

Yesterday I had a fun day in Pino Dulce. Well actually, it didn't start out so fun- I had to wait almost an hour for a bus! The longest I normally wait is half an hour. Who knows what was going on. So I got to the school almost half an hour late, which of course was annoying to me. (Yet I'm sure that nobody else in this country cares, after all, it's more normal for people to be late than on time). BUT, the good thing was that as I walked into the school yard I saw a HUGE pile of sacks and bags full of the materials to make a compost pile- my project with the kids for the day. It's the only elementary school that I work in, and I really enjoy working with the younger kids. They're so enthusiastic and fun! I like working in middle schools too...but the kids can be a bit rebelde (rebelious) at times. Anyways, we ended up making the biggest compost pile that I've made yet, in record time. The teacher even took advantage of the fact that the boys had brought their machetes to school to give the lawn a trim!

They boys "mowing" the school lawn.

After finishing the compost pile I headed to a women's group meeting. I've been a little frustrated with the attendance to meetings with this group, and once again only five women showed up. But, the good news was that one of them was new- I vaccinated her chickens last week and invited her to come to the meeting. She may have been an hour late...but at least she showed up! We made cough syrup with eucalyptus leaves.

Next I went to the middle school. Last week we talked about different career options (I've become frustrated with the fact that all young people here seem to either want to be nurses, secretaries or teachers). I was pretty impressed with the kids- we came up with a list of about 50 different careers! Then yesterday we talked about goal setting and how to accomplish your goals. They were all quite cooperative, which is saying something when you've got a class of 34 kids. I was surprised, until I learned later from one of the girls that two weeks ago, when I got really mad because the kids kept talking and wouldn't listen to me, that after I left the teacher les hico bien reganado (gave them a good scolding)! He's a young teacher, I think he just graduated recently, and this is his first year at the school. I wasn't sure if I liked him that much, but now that he's standing up for me, he's my favorite!

By 4:30 it was time to head home. All in all a successful day!

On the way to Monterrico- through the mangrove in a boat.

Sunset on the beach.

This weekend I was lucky enough to get to travel to Monterrico, Santa Rosa for our Oriente welcome party. About twenty volunteers gathered to enjoy the beautiful black sand beach on the Pacific Ocean. Although the trip ended up taking a little longer than expected (like everything in Guatemala, I don't know why I'm surprised!), it was definitely worth it. It's kind of strange to me that I can practically freeze my toes off in the morning waiting for the bus, and then sink them into scalding sand in the afternoon. What a beautiful, varied country I live in!

Unfortunately there was a bit of a dark shadow cast on my weekend by an accident on Thursday: my 20 year old neighbor Jorge fell out of the back of a truck and was rushed to the hospital in Cuilapa. I was worried about him, but didn't have much information until my host mom called me on Saturday morning to say that he couldn't see, wasn't very coherent, and that part of his skull was broken. I knew that the news was probably already 3rd or 4th hand, and that probably very little of it was medically based. But I immediately began to think of the possibilities: coma, paralysis, mental handicapping... Jorge has been a great friend to me ever since my arrival, always greeting me with a smile and a joke. He helped me flip the tires for my garden, and has been a stellar student in my English class. Upon first moving here, I figured that with the general taboo on male female relationships, I would be limited to female friends. Jorge and his brothers have been the few exceptions to that rule.

So anyways, I was quite worried when I heard the news. Sunday I stopped in Cuilapa (it's in between Monterrico and Soledad Grande) to see if I could visit Jorge at the hospital. There I met my host mom, Jorge's parents, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends, about twenty people at all. I'm afraid that the telling of this experience might be a bit lengthy, but bear with me...

Visiting hours start at 1pm, so by 12:30 there was already a crowd of about 300 people milling around the hospital entrance in the steaming midday heat. Visits are allowed only from 1-2pm on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday, so people show up early to take advantage of every last minute. The closer it got to 1pm, the more people began jostling each other, trying to get closer to the entrance. Men and boys shoved through the crowd, hawking bags of water, hard candy, and ice cream cones. Suddenly the crowd surged forward as the doors were opened, and a pair of armed guards yelled for everyone to please be cooperative, to form a line. Nobody paid any attention whatsoever, and I felt myself being propelled up the stairs. One old lady grabbed my waist and tried to shove me out of her way. "These people are crazy!" I thought to myself as I grabbed the door frame to keep from getting knocked over. Finally I was inside, and breathed a sigh of relief as a wave of cool air rushed over me.

Already I knew this hospital visit would be nothing like any other I'd ever made, but the fact was emphasized as I picked my way through the crowd of sticky young children being left at the entrance. No children under 15 are allowed in the hospital. I had no idea where to go and had lost site of my fellow Soledadtecos, so I let myself be shoved and pushed up the stairs, down a long hall, and into the trauma unit, where Jorge was. A half wall blocked our entrance to a huge hospital ward, and everyone gave a collective sigh of exasperation as we were told to wait until the patients finished their lunches.

Finally a lady pushed out a cart of trays and lunch scraps, the door was opened, and the multitudes flooded into the strangest hospital scene that I'd ever seen. I felt as though I'd been transported back in time to the 1950s. Large homemade signs with bubble letters proclaimed that we were in the men's trauma unit. Decorations from a father's day past hung limply on the walls, which at one time must have been white, but were now yellowed, chipped, and stained. The ward was divided by half walls into six smaller wards, each with 8 beds. Jorge was in the first, lying on a lumpy bed with mismatched sheets, no pillow. Shirtless, he looked incredibly frail and tiny. He's probably a head shorter than me, and like most Guatemalan men in my village he's very slender. Yet due to his vibrant personality, I'd never thought of him as small before. At first glance, he looked terrible- both eyes puffy, black and blue, one swollen all the way shut. His face covered with cuts and bruises.

One by one, everybody began to shuffle to the bed, hugging him, holding his hand, whispering words of encouragement, or perhaps dispair. Despite looking terrible, I saw that he greeted everyone(phew! he's not in a coma), and that soon he was making jokes and laughing(phew! he's still Jorge). He seemed to have full function of his arms and legs (phew! he's not paralyzed). Yet watching everyone's teary greetings was getting to be too much for me. I looked around the ward to distract myself. "Please do not hug, touch, or kiss the patients" read a yellowed sign. Hmmm. maybe they did away with that rule. "Please keep face mask over mouth during your entire visit" read another. Not a mask in site.

A few nurses bustled about, a few men in white coats, presumably doctors. But with no name tags in sight, who knows. A cart of syringes, needles and bandages rolled by. Instead of the typical bright red biohazardous waste container, sharps were tossed into an empty 2 L water bottle. Hmm. An armed police officer walked by, hands on hips, surveying the crowd for trouble makers. Two heavy men stopped in front of my in matching polo shirts, conferring between themselves. "Funerales Moreira #2" read the shirts, listing an address and phone number and declaring their funeral services available 24 hours a day. I guess just in case someone where to die on the spot? Somehow that seemed inappropriate...

Suddenly it seemed that the temperature in the room had risen 10 degrees since we had entered, and my eyes were drawn to the yellowed curtains hanging limply in front of an open window. Guess there wasn't any air conditioning after all. Imagine being in a hospital with no air conditioning in August in South Carolina, and you'll know how it felt.

I realized that just about everybody had talked to Jorge, so I maneuvered myself to the foot of his bed. Johnny, our tough 14 year old neighbor, stoically greeted Jorge, but as soon as he walked away began snuffling into his bandanna. Oh jeez. Even Johnny is crying? I don't know if I can do this... But suddenly Margarita, Jorge's mother was motioning to me

"Jorge, es seño Libby", she said.

"Hola Jorge, good afternoon" I said to him.

"Good night" he said, pulling me in for a hug. Well at least he still remembered something I taught him.

"Como esta?" I asked stupidly, of course he's not ok.

"Ay Libby, yo creo que me hice pura chatarra" he replied- I'm afraid I've been turned into pure junk. In a rush I assured him that it's not true, but he said "Pero de veras, como me ve?"- really, how do I look? I stalled for a moment, taking in the grotesquely swollen shut eye, which trickles a bit of blood as he smiles.

"Bien guapo, como siempre" I reassured him. Just as handsome as ever. I told him that my church family is praying for him, and that I'm so happy to see him smiling and joking. I mumbled something else about how I'll be praying for him, how glad I am that he's already doing better, and give him another hug.

I moved away from the bed, to the outskirts of Jorge's entourage, and found myself next to his younger brother, Giovanni, who's eyes are red from crying. I absentmindedly rested my hand on the foot of the bed behind me, then jerked my hand away as my fingers stuck to a piece of forgotten gum. A husky man in the next bed over was talking to his teenage son, and I saw them both grin as they stared at me. I guess I'll always be entertaining, no matter where I go. I sighed and glanced upwards, noting that the florescent lights are full of flies. Suddenly a voice came over the PA system, announcing that visiting hours are over and asking everyone to please leave. Nobody moved, so the police officer began singling people out and getting a movement started towards the door.

I walked out of the hospital with my host mother and her sister, down a rocky, uneven path to a snack stand where they bought snacks. Our group slowly reassembled in twos and threes, munching on 12 cent bags of chips and sipping cheap sodas. Nine of us piled into a Ford Explorer, another 15 or so into a Toyota Tacoma. And so the outing ended like any other.

All in all, I'm relieved. Jorge looks much better than I expected. I should have known not to let myself get blown away by the sensationalistic way that Guatemalans tend to talk about any misfortune. In general they love talking about terrible, gruesome events, not because they lack respect, but just because they do. For those of you who pray, I'd ask that you do so for Jorge's continued recovery. Tomorrow he's going to have some kind of head surgery at 7am. After my short visit to the hospital, I'd never wish upon anybody that they need to receive any medical procedure there, much less surgery . The utter chaos and the filthy, unprofessional air of the hospital really amazed and scared me. But I guess that's public health care in Guatemala for you...

Emelin with a crown of flowers.

Inez and Tia Leslie

Making "memelas" for the dogs with dona Francisca

A beautiful sunrise in Soledad Grande.

Here we are in 2011 already! Hard to believe that I only have TEN months left in Guatemala!

I had a wonderful two week vacation at home for Christmas. I've always loved the Christmas season, but being able to spend so much time with family and friends made it even more special this year. I feel truly blessed to have such wonderful people in my life! The weather even cooperated; allowing for a beautiful white Christmas (it'd been two years since I'd seen snow!), and clear skies for my trip back to Guate.

Now that I'm back in Soledad Grande I'm gearing up for my last year of service. The kids go back to school either this week or next week (nobody ever knows what the real date is...), so I'm working on organizing lesson plans for the school year. I'm excited to continue with our school gardens and add some more diverse topics and projects, including teaching about the environment and painting a world map mural at one of the schools.

Work with my women's groups has been a bit slow- many women are spending lots of their time harvesting coffee or snow peas right now. Or if they aren't harvesting, they're busy preparing lunch all morning, then taking it to their husbands/sons/brothers in the fields at lunch time. I'm hoping that they'll be ready to get back into a schedule of regular meetings soon!

Transportation here in Guatemala is very different than what most Americans are used to. While it's very common to own your own car in the US, here most people rely on public transportation. That transportation takes on different forms, depending on where you live. Buses that travel longer distances are generally refurbished Blue Bird school buses from the US, called "camionetas". I take these buses when I travel to the Peace Corps office, or travel pretty much anywhere further than an hour from my site. Although they are big, they are almost always very crowded: three people to a two person seat (not including children, of course) is normal. When Claudia came to visit, she commented on what she called the "keystone effect" of camionetas. This occurs when all the seats on the bus are full to capacity, but there are still more people who must sit down. Often these latecomers end up getting only a cheek's worth of sitting space, which is pretty darn uncomfortable. With the crazy way that people drive here, coupled with the curvy, bumpy roads, it's often hard to keep from falling off your perch. However, if you're perched half on a seat and half in the aisle, and another unfortunate traveler ends up with the equivalent perch in the seat next to you, something magical happens: you can no longer fall into the aisle! This last person to sit down becomes the "keystone", thus holding all six or seven people in place, despite the fact that two are halfway suspended over the aisle. The fact that I usually never know the sweaty people holding me in place, who are often sweaty or holding crying babies, well, it just makes the traveling experience all the more interesting.

Another fun (or at least entertaining, when it's not downright annoying) part of riding on camionetas is that at every stop vendors get on selling all kinds of things: water, soda, nuts, fried plantain chips, hard candy, ice cream (that mysteriously never seems to melt), cake, fruit, and even complete meals including tortillas and stuffed peppers or fried chicken. If you're not hungry, don't worry, you might just get the chance to buy a little whiteboard with Disney princesses on it, a pencil topped with a heart that lights up when you write, medicine that reputedly cures everything, or a book of jokes or ghost stories. There are even evangelicals that will spend five to fifteen minutes preaching to all the passengers, or beggars asking for money to cure their mysterious illnesses.

Now when it comes to my village, we're quite lucky to have a nice paved road. It's very, very windy, as it drops 1,030 meters (3,379 feet) in about 8.5 miles west to Colis, and 1,270 meters (4,166 feet) in the hour drive east to Jalapa. They only finished paving the road two years ago, but since then there has been constant transportation through my village. There are two bus companies, each with about 15 buses, that drive back and forth between Colis and Jalapa from 5am-6pm every day. Now when I say bus, I actually mean a 14 passenger van. They are referred to as "micro buses" here. And although they are meant to fit 14 people, I've ridden in vans packed with as many as 30 people. As you can see from the picture, when the van gets full, they just tell people to climb on top, or to stand on the ladder on the back. Luckily, nobody has told me to do that yet. (I don't think Peace Corps would approve). While these vans aren't usually in the best of repair, they are always decked out in all kinds of tacky stickers, have little handmade wooden benches for when the normal seats get full, and have killer stereo systems so that duranguense music is always blasting. (If you've never heard of duranguense, just google Los Tigres del Norte).

Though most people in my community rely on the micro buses, some have their own transportation. The most common vehicle is a 1985 Toyota Tacoma pickup truck. That's what my host dad drives. It amazes me how they keep those trucks running, but even more that they can fit so many people in them. Twenty five people can easily fit in the tiny bed of one of those pickups. Add another five in front and you've got an even thirty. (I'm including children of course, but still. That's a lot). Now if you don't have a truck, the next level down would be a motorcycle or dirt bike, and then a bicycle. (All ridden without helmets, of course). But my favorite popular form of transportation here is, of course, the horse. They're ridden, used to carry sacks of broccoli or fertilizer, bundles of firewood.

Speaking of horses, there was a "carrera de cintas" today after church as a fundraiser for the confirmation class. Between two tall posts they hung a rope, just above head level of the riders. On the rope they tied a bunch of small rings with a red ribbon. Then the "caballeros" (horsemen) took turns riding between the posts and trying to snatch a ring. But the tricky part is that they could only use a pen to grab the ring. I was pretty convinced that it was impossible, but amazingly enough there were some guys that were really good at it! But they told me that that is the only kind of horse race that they do here. Hmmmm, I think it would be fun to teach them some gymkhana events- egg and spoon race, ride a buck, etc.

Ok, I think I've rambled on enough for today. Nine days till NY!

Here's how the turkey arrived at my house.

Sole with our Thanksgiving turkey

Despite being far from home, I had a wonderful Thanksgiving, complete with crisp, cool November weather! I invited the volunteers that live close by to my house for dinner, and we made an impressive group of 15. We just received a bunch of new volunteers here in the Oriente (the eastern part of Guatemala), which more than doubled the volunteer population out here. Yay oriente!

Two months ago I talked to a neighbor who raises turkeys, and bought a turkey from her. So two days before Thanksgiving I went to pick it up. I wasn't sure how I was going to get it back to my house, but was told that I should just put it in a sack. (I don't know why I didn't think of that- everything gets carried around in a sack in Guatemala!) Sole helped me kill, pluck and clean it- I realized that the only other time I've killed a turkey I used a gun. Though I didn't have a scale to actually weigh the turkey, I think it was about 12lbs. For Q125 ($15), that's not a bad deal at all!

Wednesday I went grocery shopping in Jalapa with Sara, a neighboring volunteer (who is from Dryden, NY! What a small world!), and we made apple and pumpkin pies, and Mom's famous potato rolls. Thursday morning we made stuffing and got the turkey in the oven, while listening to Bing Crosby. (I have to say that I am really getting into the Christmas mood, and can't wait to go home in 14 days!) We had a delicious Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings: roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, honey glazed carrots, potato rolls, cornbread, homemade herbed butter, broccoli salad, pumpkin, apple, and blackberry pie, spice cake, and a fruit tart. Not too bad from being miles and miles away from America!

What a delicious spread of desserts!

I have to say that being so far from home during the holidays has been quite possibly one of the hardest parts about being in the Peace Corps for me. While I've been very lucky to have American friends to spend Thanksgiving with both this year and last, it has really made me appreciate my family and friends in NY. And although I enjoyed spending time with my host family for Christmas last year, I can't quite contain my excitement about coming home for Christmas this year! And I'm not too sad to be missing out on all the tamales...they made me sick last year!

Besides counting down the days until I get to see my family (!) I've been keeping quite busy. Yesterday was the end of the school year ceremony for my middle school kids in Pino Dulce. They invited me to a lunch that they made with their teachers, and then there was a ceremony at the school, in which the kids did a sort of exposition of what they've learned this year. The kids families came to watch. I was pleasantly surprised when the teachers announced that they were going to randomly call on the kids to explain the different activities that they'd done with me this year! When one of the kids explained how to make a compost pile, the teacher asked how many had made their own compost piles at home, and a bunch raised their hands! Although the teachers didn't have my diploma printed because they couldn't remember my last name (they LOVE to give out diplomas in Guatemala for any excuse), it was far more meaningful to me to see that what I've taught this year really did stick with the kids. It was also nice to see that the teachers appreciated my work, and actually paid attention to what I was doing. (Sometimes I really had to work on the teachers to get them to participate in my activities, instead of just treating me like a babysitter). But all in all, it was definitely a successful year! I'm excited to work with these kids again next year.

What a cute little spectator!

And they're off!

Phew! After a long week of traveling, I'm back in site. Last Saturday I traveled to Todos Santos, a town nestled in the mountains of the department of Huehuetenengo. Dia de Todos los Santos is a big holiday in all of Guatemala, but especially in Todos Santos, since it shares its name with the holiday. Todos Santos (the town) is known for the traditional dress that all its people still wear, and also for the drunken horse races that take place on Todos Santos. Men pay Q25 to rent a horse, and then race back and forth on a straight sand track. I don't really know who won, but then again I don't think they did either. Apparently the point of this madness is for someone to die so as to ensure a bountiful harvest in the coming year. But I don't think anyone died this year. Although it sounds crazy, it was not as out of control as I expected. I only saw two men fall off, and they didn't seem to be very hurt.

My friend Trisha and I were having a hard time seeing, so we found our way down to a fence along the side of the track. We were close to the start, so we could see the men getting ready to race, helped by the wranglers who had brought the horses for the race. One guy was getting on a horse right in front of us, and I heard him asking the wrangler in Spanish "So I have to stand up when the horse starts running, right?" "No! You have to sit down! And hold on!" was the answer. Jeez, this guy has no idea what he's doing, I was thinking to myself. Suddenly the horse took off, and the guy shouted to Trisha and I, in English "It's my first time!!". A few minutes later the guy was back, and ready to chat in English some more "I'm scared!" "It's my first time" "Look at my leg, it's...temblando (shaking)!" "I don't want to die!" . And he was off again for another lap. This time, pulling up beside us he cried out "I think I like it!".

That night I headed to the aldea where my friends Trisha and Erin live. It was great to see my friends, and to visit another part of Guatemala. I really hadn't traveled in the west at all until this past week. Sometimes I feel that living in the Oriente (the eastern part of Guatemala), that I'm missing out on some of the really Guatemalan parts of Guatemala. Traditional clothing, Mayan languages, etc. But while I enjoyed experiencing a different culture, I came home feeling very glad that everyone in Jalapa speaks Spanish. It makes my job so much easier! Some of my fellow volunteers have to have someone translate for them anytime that they give presentation.

Tuesday (Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead) is when people go to the cemeteries to decorate the graves. They leave flowers, especially marigolds, which are called Flor de Muerto, or flower of the dead. They also leave fruit, bread, alcohol, soda, coffee...you name it, all in honor of their loved ones. I've honestly never seen such a happy graveyard- there were a ton of people, all chatting and decorating graves, marimbas playing, and firecrackers going off every so often. Quite the party.

The tomb of someone who must have spent time in the States.

After celebrating the holidays I headed to Antigua with all the volunteers from my training class (29) for our Midservice Conference. We spent the time getting updates from Peace Corps and sharing our experiences. A full day, as it always seems to be when I'm at the office. A little sad too, because the next time I will probably see all these kids is at the 4th of July! We celebrated by all staying at Earth Lodge, a beautiful little place outside of Antigua. It was a little chilly, but the cabins were decently warm. Upon returning to Soledad Grande on Saturday, I was reminded what real cold is! I really need to get a thermometer to see just how cold it really gets here this summer/winter!

A avocado tree framing Volcan de Agua, from Earth Lodge outside of Antigua.

Time sure flies! November 1st I will mark a year for me in Soledad Grande.

Things have been going pretty well lately. It's pretty much stopped raining. We had an entire week of rain, but now it hasn't rained in two weeks. My host dad says that "summer", or the dry season has come already, and that it probably won't rain any more this year. I won't be sad to put away my rain boots, but I have to say that I liked not having to water my garden at all! It's starting to look pretty dry...

With the beginning of the dry season has come the end of the school year. Last week we harvested our garden in the elementary school in Pino Dulce. Although the carrots and Swiss chard were a little bit stunted (I think from all the rain), we still had a decent crop, and the kids were enthusiastic. The teacher at the school has also been very supportive, and I'm excited about working with the kids again when school starts in January. (I didn't start working in this school until April or May this year). So anyways, we picked all the vegetables and weeded the garden, leaving it nice and clean for next year. I thanked the kids for all their hard work, encouraged the kids to work on compost piles at their houses, and said I was excited for next year. One of the kids told me that he was going to start a compost pile, but that he wouldn't be back next year. Why not? "Well I'm graduating from sixth grade, and I'm not going to keep studying next year". He's one of my favorites, and I honestly didn't realize that he was in sixth grade- he's so tiny! He can't be older than 10 or 11. How sad.

I also harvested a bumper crop of Swiss chard and onions with my middle school class in Pino Dulce a few weeks ago.

This Wednesday I went to a produce exchange with women from my groups in Soledad Grande and Pino Dulce. I brought carrots, beets and lettuce from my garden, and my host mom cut a bunch of mint for me to bring along and exchange. Doesn't my host sister look thrilled? (To her credit, she looks pretty good for just having woken up.) I came back with oranges, sweet potatoes, coffee, string beans, and some fruits that I don't know the name of in English...

Here are some of my favorite girls from Pino Dulce with their produce. It was a really good time- I think there were about seven groups in all that came to the exchange. Since we were the only ones from the mountain, we were the only ones who brought cold weather crops (broccoli, cabbage, radishes, Swiss chard, cilantro, etc.), which definitely worked to our advantage! In no time at all my ladies were out of vegetables!

This afternoon I went to visit a neighboring community that I'm hoping to start working in, but shortly before I was going to leave, our neighbor came over to ask my host mom if the cow who'd just calved belonged to her husband. Although my host dad and his father keep their cows about an hour's walk down the mountain, they have a big pasture behind our house where they keep heifers and dry cows. Usually Nando (my host dad) brings the cows and heifers back to his dad's house right before their going to calve, but this one caught him off guard. So anyways, Sole (my host mom) and I went to check it out. The cow had picked a nice secluded spot to have her calf, and Sole was worried that the neighborhood dogs were going to try and eat the calf (apparently this has happened before). Being a Jersey, the calf wasn't too heavy, so I could carry it back to the house. But the cow wasn't too smart, and wouldn't follow me and the calf. Sole had to chase behind it, and it took the help of two little boys to get the cow headed in the right direction. I'm sure we made quite a site- the gringa carrying a calf, a Guatemalan lady caring a screaming three-year old (she's terrified of cows), and two little boys chasing a cow up and down a hill. But it all ended well, and we've got a nice looking chivito in pasture by the house now.

The girls at my middle school competing for the Miss Independence Day title.

The students and teachers at the Pino Dulce middle school.

A contestant in the primary school competition.

And the rain continues. Peace Corps sent out a warning late last week that Hurricane Matthew was going to be hitting Guatemala over the weekend, and that we should stock up on food, water and cell phone minutes. However, when Saturday dawned with only a light drizzle, I thought we were safe. I was wrong. It started raining for real on Sunday, so we've had three days of solid wind, rain, fog, and cold. Ugh. Well the rainy season should be over by November...just a little over a month left. November through February tend to be cold, but at least it doesn't rain. There's nothing worse than being cold AND wet.

And good things do happen during the rainy season. For one, Guatemalan Independence Day on the 15th of September. Man are these people patriotic. In schools they put SO much time and effort into preparing. For me it meant very little work in my schools for the better part of two weeks. First I was invited to a beauty pageant in my local primary school to elect the Nina de Independencia, or basically Independence Day Princess. Despite starting 2 hours late, it was a lot of fun- lots of singing and dancing along with the little girls competing. The next day I was invited to basically the same thing in the local middle school. Two days later I was invited to a parade in Pino Dulce, which included my primary and middle school kids, plus another neighboring school. That was a lot of fun, despite the mud. The next week I was invited to a Indep. day celebration, again at the local primary school. It started a whopping 3 hours late. Oh Guatemala. I really enjoyed myself at all of these events, they were really entertaining, and its fun to see the kids perform. (Although I got a little bit sick of hearing the Guatemalan national anthem- it's five and a half minutes long!) The major downside, however, was being asked, begged, and demanded to take pictures of everybody's children. I ended up taking over 300 pictures in the two weeks. I really need to stop being such a push over and just tell people no. While I like taking pictures, getting them all printed, handed in to the right people, and payed for...that's something else all together!

I swear to God, I'm never taking this many pictures again...

Last week was field based training, where the new trainees, who arrived in August came to visit Jalapa. It was exciting for me be able to meet these soon-to-be trainees, and get to show off my site a little. It was also kind of crazy to think that a year ago I was in their shoes! Nervous, overwhelmed, and with no idea where I was going to end up! We spent one day in my site touring family gardens, then a day in Pino Dulce cooking with my women's group, then two days in the eco park in Pino Dulce learning about and putting into practice soil conservation.

My neighbor's house at 7am. I can't even imagine washing that many clothes!

My neighbor's house at 12pm. This is why it's so hard to dry clothes here.

Living on top of a mountain, at 8,000 feet, really makes for interesting weather. For example, this morning was absolutely beautiful. My room, unfortunately, has no windows. But there is a crack between the block wall and the tin ceiling just big enough to let light in the eastern wall in my room. That crack is the bane of my existence when it's cold and windy, but on sunny mornings I like it. I have two alarms set on my watch. The first goes off at 5:30, and lately I've been too lazy to get up that early. But that way I'm usually half awake at approximately 5:45, which is when the sun rises right now. For about ten minutes the most beautiful golden light spills into my room. By 6, when my second alarm goes off, the golden light has gone away and a harsher, whiter light replaces it. But I can't complain, when there's light of any intensity coming into my room at that time, it means it's going to be a nice day...or morning, at least.

You see, I got all excited this morning, thinking it was going to be a beautiful, sunny day. I hung out the pile of damp clothes that hasn't dried the past couple of days, went for a run, and went to church. But by the time that we got out of church at noon, the clouds had blown in and the sun had gone away. I got home just in time to bring my clothes in before the rain started. And now it's been raining on and off all afternoon. Sigh. Guess I should just be happy for having half of a beautiful day! And actually, it's looking like the rain might hold off long enough for me to work in my garden a bit this afternoon...

...then what do torrential downpours in September bring?

Talking to my mom the other day, she mentioned that someone had commented to her that my blog posts are always very positive. Isn't being a Peace Corps volunteer difficult sometimes? Well, yes. It's not always easy. But when I started this blog, I made a conscious decision to not complain too much. I hate complainers, and I don't want to be one. But upon hearing this comment, I got to thinking...maybe it's not fair to talk SO much about the good and so little about the bad. So let's see. Here's a list of things I don't like about Guatemala:

1. Chauvinism, or what they call "machismo" here. It's SO frustrating. In general, men here treat me with respect, because although I'm a woman, I'm different. I'm the gringa, and they don't quite know what to think of me. And on the surface, men are respectful to women. But the stories I hear about the ways that men treat their wives and daughters on a daily basis...makes me pretty sure I'll never marry a Guatemalan. Or at least not one from a village! Just the little things frustrate me. A man telling his wife to pour him more coffee, although the coffee pot is right next to him, and she has to get up and walk across the room to pour it. Scolding her because the shirt he wants to wear is wet (but how are clothes supposed to dry when it rains EVERY day?).

2. Rain. Ok, honestly, I think I got pretty lucky with the weather in my site. The temperature doesn't vary all that much. As long as it's not raining or foggy, you can usually get along in just a t-shirt. Not too hot, not too cold. The nights can be very cold (I've worn long underwear every night so far), but I think God I'm from NY and know what real cold weather is. And at least I'm not in a really hot site, I think that would be harder for me to deal with than the cold. But the rain. Oh the rain. Right now...it just won't stop. EVERY afternoon it rains, and some days, like today, it just rains all day and all night and into the next day. It wouldn't be so bad, but clothes don't dry here without sun (nope, no clothes dryers). Makes me wish all those Cornell students who complain about the weather in Ithaca would come to Guatemala for a week- then they'd know what real rain was!

3. Tact, or rather, lack there of. Guatemalans just don't have it. Things that you just wouldn't say to someone in the States is perfectly normal to say here. For example, I was talking with a lady who is a good friend of mine the other day about how much I walk. (I actually really enjoy this part of living here and not having a car: I walk all the time, just to get where I need to go). But she said "Well that's good, because you're fat. Maybe you'll lose weight". Recently, I was telling my host mom that I'm going to be in my friend Hannah's wedding next summer, and how I'm planning to run a half marathon again next spring to stay in good shape. "Did your friend tell you you're too fat to be in her wedding?!", she asked me, unabashedly. Nope, no she didn't. Americans just don't say things like that! In the States, if someone is fat, you see that they are fat, and that's that. But here, you have to talk about it. Oh well, it's definitely made me less self-conscious.

4. Rats. Maybe I should have made this number three, because it goes along quite well with the rain. I don't like to get wet, and apparently rats don't either. So when the rain becomes quite necio (this is one of my favorite Guatemalanisms- it means stubborn, but they use it to describe anything annoying that won't stop or go away) they trade their outdoor dwellings for the rafters in out house. My host sister had a cat for about two weeks, which helped, but then it ran away. Now it's just up to the rat poison (which I need to buy more of this weekend...). But while cats eat the rats, the poison just kill the rats, which leads to them showing up dead in unfortunate places (such as in the walls of the house or in my soccer cleat).

Ok, that's enough complaining for today. Here are a couple of highlights from the last couple of weeks:

I spent two half days this past week helping one of my favorites in her garden (Francisca, my host dad's mom). She's got one of the biggest gardens, with a great fence, and over ten types of vegetables: carrots, squash, two varieties of Swiss chard, onions, basil, mint, cilantro, celery, tomatillo, turnips, beets, and radishes. Pretty awesome! Plus, she's just a wonderful person, and fun to be around. Whenever I don't have anything to do, I go visit her. (Lauren, Francisca planted the sunflower that's blooming from seeds she collected from the sunflower that grew from the seed you gave her last year!)

I arrived in Pino Dulce to a couple of great surprises after my vacation in the States. First, the elderberry wine that we made two months ago was ready! (It wasn't really my idea to make wine, but we were making elderberry jam, and this family had a wine recipe, so we figured we'd try it out). And surprisingly, it was pretty good. Secondly, I was very pleased to see the progress that the kids had made in the school garden without me. Everything had grown like crazy, they'd transplanted the Swiss chard that needed transplanting, and they'd even built a new fence!! I have to admit that although I get very frustrated with the teachers sometimes (mostly when they just fail to show up), they've been more supportive than I'd expected.

The first salad out of my garden!

Ooops, looks like I’ve been slacking on the blog again lately! But I’ve been busy, I promise! I was lucky enough to have my parents visit me at the end of July. I was pretty excited, since I wasn’t sure coming in to Peace Corps that Dad was going to be able to come visit me or not. And it had been almost a whole year since I’d seen him! Although they were only here about five days, I made sure to keep them busy- visiting some of my favorite families, building a chicken coop with my host family, teaching a cooking class, going to a soccer game. Then I took a week of vacation to go home! Which was amazing. I visited family in NY, went to our family reunion in OH, met my new cousins (so cute!), spent time with friends. Enjoyed the August heat and humidity. Ate fresh sweet corn (they basically only eat what we call field corn here). Went to Wegman’s. Played with the dogs. All in all a wonderfully spent 8 days. On the way back to Guatemala, I ended up on the same flight as a Peace Corps staff member, who told me that the new group of volunteers had arrived in country earlier that day. It’s crazy to think that exactly a year ago I was arriving as well, wide-eyed and not having a clue as to what I’d signed up for, or what my life was going to be like for the next two years. And here I am with only 15 months left! When I arrived back in site, I was pleasantly surprised to see just how much my garden had grown. A week of good rain and sun sure does wonders. (Haha, and on days when I feel like not the greatest volunteer, I just look at my garden and think that at least I’m providing a good example of what a family garden should look like!) I was able to take advantage of some Swiss chard and carrot greens for a recipe that I taught this week (thanks Mom!): White Beans with Greens 1 pound white beans, cooked 1 handful Swiss chard, chopped 1 handful carrot greens, chopped (ok this wasn’t in the original recipe, but I had more than I knew what to do with, and it turned out really good!) 3 tomatoes, diced 1 onion, diced 3 cloves of garlic, chopped 2 tablespoons olive oil Brown the onions and garlic. Add tomato and let cook for a few minutes. Add greens and cook until wilted. Add beans. Flavor with salt and pepper. Enjoy! Quick, simple, delicious and nutritious. People here eat SO many black beans that I’m trying to get them to branch out a little bit to other colors. We’ve also done a red bean recipe with tomato sauce and chili powder that went over well. So there’s a taste of what I’m trying to teach these ladies.

Julia Kathyrn Rodriguez

William David Flemming

Derek Richard Cotterill

First of all, I want to say Bienvenidos to all my new baby cousins! The first, Derek, was born December 16th, Will on June 1st, and most recently Julia on July 8th! I must say that I was a little disappointed that all my cousins decided to have their babies while I was in Guatemala...but I'm SO excited to get to meet them all when I go home! Congrats to Liza and Jeff, Ella and Justin, Angela and James, and families! Things are going pretty well here in Guate. Last weekend I attended the All Volunteer’s Conference and 4th of July party. It was a great excuse to catch up with friends, meet other volunteers, and celebrate Independence Day, American style (including hotdogs, hamburgers, potato salad, the singing of the national anthem, speaking English, and lots of red, white and blue). Almost all the volunteers in Guatemala ( I think we’re up to almost 200 now) got together, along with staff and their families, to celebrate. A couple of highlights from this week: Wednesday I helped one of the ladies in my group, Delia, plant her garden. Instead of planting right by her house, we went to a parcel of land that her father had left her as her inheritance. We planted a good-sized plot of radishes, cilantro, onions, carrots, and Swiss chard. On the way back, we stopped by Gina, her sister-in-law’s house, where Gina asked me to look at her compost pile. And it was lovely. Almost completely decomposed and ready to use. She said she’d been wanting to learn, and her son, who is in my class at the middle school here, taught her how! It’s so wonderful to see that what I’m teaching in the school is actually sticking with the kids. And what’s more, she showed me where her sons (13 and 14) had planted a bunch of radishes and cilantro, presumably for the family to eat and to sell some as well. Thursday I spent the day in Pino Dulce, as per usual. We made a pasta salad in the morning, and, also as per usual, doña Yolanda invited me to lunch. I agreed before asking what was for lunch (although there’s not really any polite way to refuse food in rural Guatemala, as far as I can tell…). And to my dismay, I found out that lunch was caldo de menudos, or basically giblet soup. In other words, they made soup out of all the “edible” guts from a chicken they had made soup out of the day before. Yup, that’s right, heart, liver, head, feet, and who knows what else. And then they added noodles, tomato, and potatoes to liven things up. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not usually squeamish when it comes to food, and I’ve learned to eat a lot of different things here in Guatemala. But I still haven’t learned how to enjoy menudos. I can eat them, if necessary. But I don’t like it. I looked apprehensively at my bowl, wondering what the fates had in store for me. Phew, I thought, looks like I only have one menudo. But what on earth is it? You’d think that somebody with an Animal Science degree would be able to tell a heart from a liver. But it didn’t look like either. I cut it open with my spoon, and it was just a tiny little egg yolk! Apparently it was a laying hen that they killed. Gracias a Dios! And now I know that there’s at least one part of caldo de menudos that I can actually enjoy!

Everybody has their broccoli planted again.

I visited what I think may be the only true "dairy farm" on the mountain- they milk 60 cows with 2 portable milkers, rotational grazing, artificial insemination, corn silage...not like everybody else who milks two cows and feeds them chopped up potatoes...

Emelin and our new kitty, whom she has affectionately named Luna de Estrella, or "Moon of the Star"...the things that three-year-olds come up with!

I took this picture from the hill behind my house- you can see all the way to la Laguna de Ayarza! Beautiful.

Dahlias

Here another month has gone by, and I've hardly written. I guess not too much has happened, other than my regular day to day, week to week stuff. Honestly it's nice to feel like I've finally gotten a schedule going. On July 12th I will have been in Guatemala for ELEVEN months! Isn't that crazy? I still get frustrated with the pace of…well everything here at times. I mean, it seems to take forever to get anything accomplished. But little by little I feel like I’m making a bit of a difference. Yesterday the kids harvested their radishes at the Pino Dulce middle school. Each group weighed their harvest to see who had the most, and we made a salad out of the radishes, radish leaves, tomato, onion, cilantro and lemon juice. Yum! We made a small bonfire to warm up tortillas, and I also brought supplies to make s’mores in honor of the 4th of July. It was a fun way to culminate their work so far, and they were excited to plant again. Another small success- I’ve started a new group in my aldea with some women who’ve asked me how to bake a cake, make a compost pile, etc. They’ve all been super enthusiastic thus far. About a month ago we made mango cake, but at my house using my oven. I explained to them how to bake using the wood burning stoves that they all use at home- you have to get a good fire going to really warm up the stone base and walls of the oven. Then once it’s all burned down to coals, you sweep the coals out, put them on top of the metal stove top, put the cake in the stove, and put a block or something in front of the opening so the heat doesn’t escape. They all looked a bit dubious as I explained this, so last week when we met we made mango bread (can you tell it’s mango season?) at the house of one of the ladies, using her stove. Well unfortunately, we didn’t get the fire hot enough, and the bread didn’t finish baking. But a couple of days later, Margarita stopped by my house with a big smile on her face. She said she’d come to give me la prueba (the test) of the cake that’d she’d made at home that morning. And it was great! Now, I guess cake isn’t the most nutritious thing to teach people to make. But the ladies love it, and it’s great to see them exciting about learning a new skill. Margarita excitedly told me how her son’s birthday is next month, and she wanted to practice so that she can make me a birthday cake. How fun! A funny story to end on- my host sister just gets more entertaining every day. Sometimes she drives me nuts, but she's mostly pretty cute. A few nights ago at dinner she was really grumpy, and got mad when her mom told her there wasn't any more of something that she wanted. So she's said "Entonces, me voy para la mierda", "Fine, I'll just go to hell then". When her Mom asked where that was, she said in town, and when asked if she was really going to go there all alone, she said that no, she was going to take her dad with her. He told her he wouldn't go with her, and she said, "But there's dogs there!". :)

I'm sure you've all been hearing about Guatemala in the news lately, and yes, things have been kind of crazy this past week! What with Volcano Pacaya erupting on Thursday, then again on Friday, and then Hurricane Agatha blowing in for the weekend, Guatemala was turned on its head.

My dear friend Claudia had no idea what she was signing up for when she decided to come spend two weeks with me in Guatemala...The first week and a half that she was here we spent in my site. She may have thought she was coming to relax, but instead I put her straight to work. Haha, well I let her relax some, but she followed me around all week, helping out with my women's meetings and activities in the schools. Also, I finally got my garden planted! The second week, I took some vacation days so we could explore Guatemala a little more. We had planned to climb Pacaya...but then it erupted. So we opted out on that one. We visited Lake Atitlan, but it rained the whole time. And then that weekend I got a text from Peace Corps saying that we were in "standfast" mode, meaning that we weren't supposed to travel at all until further notice. Luckily Claudia and I were in Guatemala City, since she had her flight out booked for Sunday. However, with the massive amounts of ash that fell on the city, topped by the massive amounts of water, things at the airport were pretty much shut down, until today or tomorrow I think. Standfast wasn't lifted until Monday afternoon for me, and Claudia ended up taking a bus to El Salvador so that she could get home. Phew! So not exactly the way either of us had planned her visit, but it was still great to be able to spend time together!

Upon returning home, I was relieved to find my house still standing, and very little damage in general in my village. When the main road was built, a lot of it seems to have been kind of carved out of the mountain, leaving a lot of rather unstable looking banks along the way. With all the rain, a lot of those banks gave way, at least partially, making quite a mess of the road. But they've got a lot of it cleaned up now, and I was told that it was only impassable for one day. Not too bad. A neighboring village didn't fair so well, however. San Miguel, which is down off the mountain and has a small river running through it, was nearly washed away. They say that with all the rain the river overflowed, and took a lot of houses and cars with it. Luckily most of the damage occurred during the day, so everybody was able to get out safely. It's so sad though, a lot of families have been left with absolutely nothing. All the neighboring communities are really working together to help them out, collecting food, clothes, medical supplies, etc. And I heard that the first lady of Guatemala even came to pay them a visit today!

Somehow shopping in Guatemala is always harder than it should be. I headed to town early this morning, with a pretty manageable shopping list. First on the list was to buy chicken wire to build a chicken coop and fence in my garden. My host dad helped me measure last night with a stick that he declared to be 2 varas long, and he added up 52 varas (a vara is a measurement used in Guatemala, it's 83.5 centimeters). But one of my friends told me she bought chicken wire per meter, so I converted the varas to 44 meters. I thought I was ahead of the game. But the first store I went to offered me chicken wire for Q12/vara, or Q480 for a roll of 45 meters.

"Well, what do you sell it for per meter?"

"We don't sell it per meter. Only per vara". Ok, way to be difficult.

It seemed kind of high, so I went to the store next door. They offered me Q11/vara, or Q10/yard. Wait, varas, meters, and now yards?! How confusing do they have to make this? But they didn't have the right length, so I figured I'd check out the place across the street. (That's right, there are three hardware stores on the same block). But then the guy from the first store came running up to me to ask how much I wanted, and offered me Q11/vara (down a whole quetzal from the first quote). I still wanted to check prices at another store, so I went across the street. There they offered me the roll of 50 yards for Q400. Let's see, 50 yards is 45 meters, so that's less than Q9/meter, or Q7.50/vara. That's more like it! So that's what I bought.

But should buying one roll of chicken wire really require that much converting? Does your average poor Guatemalan farmer work through all those conversions to find the right price? Since most adults living in rural Guatemala have received only minimal amounts of education (if any at all, many are illiterate), I highly doubt it.

Phew, chicken wire crossed off the list. Next stop, the photo shop to print the 210 photos that people have asked me for lately. What with a wedding, two birthday parties, a baptism and a trip to the lake with my host family, they've added up quickly this month! Q420 out of my pocket...hope that everybody pays me back quickly!

Lastly I headed to the grocery store for the things I can't find in the market (powdered milk, cinnamon, vanilla, mouth rinse), and then to the market. The official market day is Wednesday, but Saturday is still busy. Sacks and crates of tomatoes, carrots, broccoli and potatoes line the market street- three rows of vendors, making it pretty hard to maneuver. Swiss chard, lettuce, cabbage, celery, onions, avocado. Blackberries, bananas, plantains, mangoes, guavas, oranges, lemons, cantaloupes, watermelons, pineapples, apples. The list goes on and on. The vendors all have their goods spread on tables, stacked in crates, and spread out on the street. All the vendors shout to the multitudes, claiming the best price or quality. Then you've got the customers, almost all shorter than me. Mostly dark skinned, haired, and eyed. So yeah, I generally stand out as I have to duck to avoid catching my head on the makeshift shade roofs made out of sacking or tarps. All the bustling about makes it hard to get anywhere, and nobody stops to let other people get past. And everybody carries a big bag for their purchases. If you want to get anywhere, you have to push your way through. It's kind of crazy. But luckily today I found everything on my list, and at a decent price. I don't think anybody ripped me off- Q4.50/pound onion (56cents), Q3/.5 pound jalapenos (37 cents), Q2.50 (31 cents) for 5 bananas (five on anything is called "una mano", or a hand), Q3 for two plantains, and Q5 (63 cents) for three HUGE avocados. Delicious.

So even though the market isn't as neat an organized as Wegman's, and it's always a lot more hectic than Wegman's on a Sunday afternoon, I definitely prefer it. What grocery store carries all those fruits and veggies all the time, and allows you to haggle for the price? One of the many things I love about this country.

Phew, got everything that I needed. Just need to stop and pick up my chicken wire. But wait. The bus terminal is full of vendors, but no buses. After asking around I find out that it's under construction (it didn't look like there was any construction going on), so my bus is parked up the street (or that's what I gathered from the vague wave up the street that I got for an answer). Right. I pay for my chicken wire, throw in a pound of u-nails, and a guy working at the store throws the roll of wire on his shoulder to carry it to my bus. We ran into the ayudante (or literally the "helper", the guy who collects money and helps the passengers with whatever they happen to be transporting, from chickens to milk to avocados to barbed wire), and he grabbed the wire and led me to the new parking spot for my bus. Since I'm the only gringa living on my bus route, the chofers (drivers) and ayudantes all know me, which can be kind of annoying, but also pretty convenient when the buses seem to have dissapeared from the terminal. Ayudantes can be a little creepy sometimes, but I'm always amazed by their agility. This guy managed to climb up the ladder on the bus with a 2 meter tall roll of wire over his shoulder. They also routinely tie things down on the roof rack while the bus is moving, usually very quickly on windy roads, then suddenly will pop through the window of the sliding door and start collecting money. Crazy.

So all in all, a productive morning. I got home to find that my host dad had paid a neighbor's teenage son to dig up part of the lawn to start our garden. Yay! I was planning to help..but I'm not going to complain. It was a LOT of REALLY thick grass. Now we've just got to pull the sod out, dig the dirt up really well, and add some of my nice organic compost. And build the fence. And plant. So I don't feel left out.

Now I'm drinking hot chocolate and listening to the rain. Because when you have a tin roof and there's a downpour, that's all you can listen to. Makes me feel lucky to live in such a nice house. It's pretty basic, cement floor, cinder block walls, metal roof with bare rafters. But it's a really nice house by local standards, and it's DRY!

This picture is of a fruit and vegetable exchange that my women's group had on Friday with my friend (and fellow PCV) Alene's women's group. It's "flor de izote" season- a flower that grows from a tree that looks like a cross between a cactus and a palm tree. The flowers are edible, though rather bitter, and my ladies up here on the mountain go crazy for them. So we brought potatoes, broccoli, and peas, and went home with flowers, oranges, bananas and limes. Alene and her group gave a talk about chicken nutrition, then we had a dish to pass lunch and exchanged produce. A good day. (Side note- see how I'm a head taller than...almost all the women in the

picture? That's the story of my life here...)

The view of the volcanoes in Antigua, on my way to Pino Dulce this morning.

My tire gardens: finally I have fresh cilantro and radishes whenever I want!

Emelin, looking absolutely thrilled with the piñata I made her- it turned out to be some kind of a berry.

Emelin and I with the piñata that Desiree made her- a pretty cool ice cream cone!

So I’ve been asked some pretty strange things by Guatemalans. But the question I was asked last week pretty much tops them all. I stopped by the house of a lady I’ve been working with in Pino Dulce to take a look at her compost pile. Her husband came home from lunch while I was there, and of course she wouldn’t hear of me leaving without eating. So there I was, eating my broccoli and tortillas, when her husband asked me “So do you a device to find buried treasure?” What? Buried treasure? I told him no, I did not, but why did he want to know? “Well I have this piece of land and light comes out of the ground at night. So somebody told me that there just might be a treasure buried there. So I was wondering if you had a device to find buried treasure.” Umm, right. I realized he must be talking about a metal detector, but did he really say that the ground glows at night? I asked again, just to be sure, and yes, I heard him correctly. Unfortunately, I do not own a metal detector, so I guess we may never know. This past week was pretty eventful- two birthday parties and six piñatas. It started out with Emelin’s 3rd birthday on Thursday. I asked my host mom if it would be all right if I made her a piñata. “Sure,” she replied “but if we have a piñata, we have to invite kids. And if we invite kids, their parents are going to come, so I’ll have to make lunch. I’ll just invite her cousins”. Well, since my host mom is one of 18 children, that adds up to a lot of cousins. I think 50 or 60 people ended up coming! So I made a piñata and two birthday cakes, and Desiree, another PCV who lives in town, also made a piñata. Then it turns out that it was also the birthday of one of Emelin’s cousins, so his parents brought a piñata as well. Emelin, in typical three-year-old fashion, was SO excited about the piñata all week, until it came time to break it. Then she got shy and refused to hit it. Oh well, at least she enjoyed the candy. But that’s only the first three piñatas. One of the ladies in my women’s group invited me to come to a birthday party for her two granddaughters on Sunday, for lunch and to break a few piñatas. (And by the way, could you please bring your camera). Sure, why not. It turned out to be just a family party (her, her husband, four sons, two daughters, two daughters-in-law, and three granddaughters). At first I thought, well this is awkward, they obviously just wanted to invite my camera. But it actually turned out to be a lot of fun. First I was fed a heaping plate of beef stew (I’m getting better at finishing the large quantities of food that people always seem to feed me). Then we started out with a huge bunny piñata. The little girls whacked away at it for a while, and then all the adults got a turn. When that piñata was done for, we broke two more little ones. Phew! And I must say, Guatemalans are pretty intense when it comes to piñatas. They hang it on a clothesline and attach two strings. A person holds on to each string, and pull the piñata back and forth on the clothesline. And the person hitting the piñata is blindfolded and “embolado”, which literally means spun around till they’re dizzy and walk like a drunk. Fun times. Now that the rainy season is upon us, everybody is getting started planting- the men with corn, the women in their veggie gardens. I spent all day yesterday helping my host dad’s mother clean out her garden, harvest radish and mustard seeds, and fix the fence. We were planning to plant as well, but didn’t quite get that far due to the fact that grass had pretty much taken over the place. It felt good to get my hands in the dirt, and I’ve even got some good blisters. Maybe I won’t be in too much pain when we start digging out the grass to start the garden in our yard (with a hoe, mind you. Unfortunately nobody here has ever heard of a rotatiller). One thing that I still haven’t quite gotten used to is the generosity of people here. It’s pretty hard to go anywhere without being gifted something, usually food. Today, for example, I was given a cup of atol, rice and tortillas, blackberry juice, a head of broccoli, a potato, a bag of peas, a cup of coffee and a piece of sweet bread. Yesterday I was given breakfast and lunch (I think I did earn that after six hours of serious gardening), coffee and bread, a bag of whole wheat flour, and a bag of carrots. Tuesday I got invited to lunch after a baptism, and Monday…I guess that was the only day that I wasn’t given something. But see what I mean? It’s crazy. These people are poor, they have nothing, and all they want to do is give you something. I feel ok about it when it’s given in return for me working with them or teaching them something, but when it’s for just because, I honestly feel a little guilty. But refusing would be offensive. And I try to give back too- bring food to people, give them a snack if they come visit me, but it can be kind of hard, as the average family here is probably six or seven people! A loaf of homemade bread is appreciated, but hardly feeds the whole family. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to get over it- this is just a lesson in how to give and receive humbly.

Here are a couple of pictures of what I've been up to- making bread for Holy Week, an Easter egg hunt, lily pads on Rio Dulce (outside of Livingston), and me and my friends in the ruins of Tikal.

Hope everybody had a wonderful Easter! Like all the other holidays I’ve experienced thus far in Guate, this Easter was very different, but good. First of all, Semana Santa (Holy Week), or Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday, is a HUGE deal here. No school all week, and most businesses close on Thursday. Monday I was invited by my host Dad’s family to make bread with them. And did we every make bread! My host Dad’s mom has a big adobe oven, so she invited me, my host mom, and then her two sisters-in-law to bake. It’s a Holy Week tradition here to make a special kind of bread from whole wheat flour, which they grind themselves. They also add cream from their cows, the end result being pretty delicious! So they taught me to make that, and I taught them to make banana bran bread. We even added blackberries! Who would have imagined it- blackberries in March!

Tuesday I had a “cultural exchange” with a bunch of the women in my group. A fellow volunteer, who’s been here a year already, told me that she’d done an Easter egg hunt with her ladies last year. It sounded like a good time to me, so I bought about 7 dozen eggs (I think the check-out lady at the store thought I was nuts…) and some food coloring and made a huge batch of sugar cookies. And it turned out to be quite a success, if I don’t say so myself! I don’t know how many people showed up, but there were a lot. We dyed the eggs and let them dry, then locked all the kids in the casita (the house that the ladies have their meetings in) while the moms and grandmothers hid the eggs. The kids had so much fun finding the eggs that they insisted on making the señoras search for eggs once they’d finish. We finished up snacking on sugar cookies and some traditional Guatemalan food for semana santa, including dulce de platano (sweetened, cooked platanos) toreja (platano cooked with bread and milk) and tamal (kind of like polenta but eaten with beans or cheese).

Then I took advantage of my four day weekend to do a bit of traveling with some fellow PCVs. We headed to Livingston, a town on the eastern coast of Guate. It’s only reachable by boat, and has a very distinct feel because part of the population is descended from Africans who somehow got left there during the slave trade. It’s famous for its seafood and punta, which is a type of music with a distinct African beat. Then we went north to El Peten, where we visited some ancient Mayan ruins in the national park Tikal- amazing! But it was incredibly hot and humid. After walking around the park all day, we went for a swim in the lake. So refreshing! I’ve only swam in salt water since I got to Guate, and I’d forgotten how much better fresh water is!

So now it’s back to work. I’ve really been getting on my ladies to get their compost piles going, and offering up my labor to encourage them. My goal is that every lady in my group will have their compost pile started by the end of this month- we’ll see how that goes. It’s been raining quite a bit this week, and everybody is saying that “winter” is coming early this year. So strange, they call it winter because it’s the half of the year during which it’s going to rain every day. But to me it feels like spring, April showers bring May flowers! I’m excited to get my own garden started- my host parents sound like their game to help me, so hopefully it can be a joint project. Because there’s a lot of grass to dig up, and no rotatiller!

Finally got the picture uploading to work again, so here are a few pics from Mom and Uncle Gus' visit.

I’m still not used to only having two seasons. I got here at the beginning of winter, and now we’re in the beginnings of summer. But…it’s still pretty much the same. Only that it’s a bit warmer, and it’s supposed to start raining in May. On the radio they’ve got all kinds of ads for summer stuff- sunscreen, vacation destinations, etc. Pretty weird, I mean, it’s only may! Growing up in rural NY has really made me love the change of seasons, the distinctions between all four. Here, they just kind of blend together. And they’re not very different. Hence the nickname Land of the Eternal Spring, I guess.

So most of last week I spent in and around the Peace Corps Office, for a workshop called Project Design and Management. It was designed to help PCVs and people in their communities better prioritize the needs of their community, how to organize a project, how to solicit funds from government agencies, and how to supervise and evaluate projects. The previous volunteer in my site helped complete a latrine project, and over 160 families were able to build latrines. While I’m definitely benefiting from that, it’s kind of put the pressure on me to “bring” another project to the community. While I’d be glad to help, I’m a bit hesitant because there’s a lot of other work that I’m expected to complete. I was able to bring two community members to the workshop, both of whom are motivated individuals as well as pretty influential, so I’m hoping that if we do end up starting some kind of project (they’ve got all kinds of ideas, from an ambulance to water storage tanks to improved cooking stoves), that they’ll be able to play big roles in it.

When I got back to my aldea, there were all kinds of surprises waiting for me. First, there’s no water. The water pump that pumps water to all of the houses in the village every four days (each house has one spicket), is broken. There’s been no water for a week, and the community meeting to figure out how they’re going to fix it (I think basically money-wise) isn’t until Saturday. Super. Until then, everybody has to walk to springs to fetch water. (By everybody I mean the women, of course). Luckily though, we had a pretty good rainstorm yesterday, which filled up the tanks at our house. I don’t mind washing my clothes by hand…but I’m not exactly excited at the prospect of walking a mile to wash them in a stream.

There’s also some pretty good gossip in Soledad this week. While I was gone, three girls “went” with boys, which makes a total of six this month. I was surprised to find that not everybody here gets married by the Catholic church here, despite being such a religious community. However, it seems pretty normal for guys to llevar, or bring a girl home, often a secret girlfriend. When talking about the girl, they say se fue, or simply, she went with him. Generally the guy brings the girl home, and then a day or two later goes with his girl and his parents to the house of the girls’ parents, where they arreglar, or make sure there aren’t any hard feelings between the parents. At first I assumed that this was kind of a last minute thing, that only happened when the girl got pregnant. But now I’m finding that it’s pretty normal. So they move in with the guy’s family for a year or two or more, till they can afford a place of their own. Sometimes they get officially married in the church later, sometimes not.

The sad part about all of this is how young these kids are. Word on the street is that one of the, well, boys, is only 15!!!! A 22 year old guy llevared a 16 year old girl. Another girl who’s 20, and by far the best player on our soccer team, se fue a week ago. I was talking to my host mom about all of this, and said “I wonder if she’ll keep playing soccer”. She said “Oh of course not! The way it is here, as soon as a girl officially moves in with a guy, that’s it. It doesn’t matter if she played soccer, loved to dance…once she moves in with a guy, he doesn’t let her do any of that anymore”. How sad!

On a happier note, I bought an oven yesterday! I’ve been contemplating it for a long time, and finally did it yesterday. It was expensive, Q1,565, but will be well worth it…once I get my gas tank refilled. It ran out last night. Somehow I’m not very good at gauging when it’s almost out, and there’s no indicator. Bummer. But my neighbor told me to send it to town to get filled with one of the buses that pass the house every half hour or so. So I handed the tank and Q120 to the ayudante, and hopefully the bus will turn up soon with a full tank of gas for me.

Guess that’s it for now, happy spring!

I figured what with internet and all I’d be keeping up with my blog better, but my life really hasn’t been slowing down lately!

So about the visit from my family, which I said I’d expand on. Basically, it was WONDERFUL! Getting to hug your mom for a week after not seeing her for seven months is a pretty good birthday present! We spent most of the week in my site, so Mom and Uncle Gus really got an idea of what my life is like here. One day we went to a meeting with my women’s group, another day we took an hour long hike to where my host dad’s family lives. There we helped shell corn, and ate way more food than any of us wanted to! People are just too generous here sometimes, right Mom? The next day we went to another aldea where we made bread- including two of Mom’s favorite recipes, including potato rolls- mmmm! They were a success and people are asking for them again already. The last day in site we helped one of my neighbors build a box for her worms (for composting), and then headed to the eco-park, where we met up with my PC friends that live in the area. Despite it being VERY cold that night, we had a good time, including a bonfire and s’mores! The weekend we spent in Antigua, just relaxing and enjoying the good weather. All in all a great week!

Since then I’ve been keeping busy, as usual. I’ve had a couple of successes, too, I think. One, I started working at the middle school in my town. It’s a bigger group of kids- about 40! I think it’s going to be interesting working in two schools. A difference I noticed right away is discipline- the teachers in Pino Dulce are very relaxed, let the kids do pretty much whatever they want, and then scold them later for bad behavior. Also, despite me very pointedly telling them that I want them in the classroom when I’m teaching, they left for home during at the beginning of my first class! I had some words with them the next week, and they’ve more or less paid attention since then. Well, they haven’t left the school again, but they’re not always in the room. In contrast, at the beginning of my first class in Soledad Grande, the teacher gave a huge lecture to the kids about how I’m always to be treated with respect; they’re to take what I teach them seriously and to always pay attention, etc. etc. In general it just seems much more formal. But that was only the first class, so we’ll see how things go from here on out. Both groups of kids seem really great- I think the teachers may end up being the bigger challenge.

Another possible success is that I had a very positive meeting with a group of women in Miramundo, the aldea where 0/150 women showed up for my meeting. But I think I mentioned that one woman invited me to come to their microcredit group meeting? I went a few weeks ago, and we agreed that I’d go again this past week. So I did, I timed it just perfect to get there at 3, the time they told me to come at. However, as I was nearing the meeting house, I noticed that a lot of women were walking away from it. One woman said “fíjese seño, but we’ve all left, since you didn’t show up”. Wonderful. Why did you tell me to come at 3 then? It was even before 3! They had a meeting that started at 2, which apparently ended pretty quickly, and they didn’t feel like waiting around for the punctual gringa. Huh. I was able to convince 10 or so women to go back, where I did a demonstration on how to make a treatment for a cough that chickens get, “soco”. You mix a chopped up onion, a head of garlic, a lemon and some salt with a pound of raw tortilla dough (cooked, ground, corn). And we had a good discussion- they seem very interested in anything to do with keeping their chickens alive. So next week I’m going back again, hopefully to meet with the whole group. Poco a poco!

This week I’m heading to the Peace Corps Office with two community members for a workshop on community project design and management. Should be interesting!

Hope you New Yorkers are getting a good taste of spring- looks like things warmed up quite a bit last week!

Phew, what a month February has been! March looks like it should be a little smoother, so I'm happy to be getting myself organized. The 16th I attended our Reconect meeting at the Peace Corps office (roughly a 5 hour trip by chicken bus). Since I had a dentist appointment scheduled for the Monday, I went for the weekend, which was wonderful! A lot of my friends from training were there too, who I hadn't seen in over 3 months, so it was great to catch up and share experiences, in the relaxing atmosphere of Antigua:) Reconnect was good too. The idea is to get everybody together with our program directors after our first three months of service to talk things over, get new ideas, ask questions, teach us about paperwork that we'll soon need to be handing in, etc. It was a long day (8am -6pm sitting in hard plastic chairs is kind of a rough adjustment for ag volunteers), but well worth the time.

The next day I headed back to Jalapa, but instead of to my site, I went to the city to help translate for American doctors here on a medical mission. It was kind of crazy- as long as I've spoken/studied Spanish, I've never translated that much. But in two days there I probably translated more than I ever have in my life, and it was a challenge! But a good one, b/c I guess now I know that I'm halfway decent as a translator. As for the medical side of things...it was sad, seeing so many hurting people. And a little unsettling to see how little basic knowledge campesinos know about their bodies and how to stay healthy. And some things were just hard to see- a little baby absolutely covered in scabies, a 30-something year old woman who'd suffered a stroke and is now parapalegic and wasting away, and a man with a huge thyroid tumor, to name a few. The doctors, mostly from the Chicago area, worked tirelessly, and were genuinely able to help people. All were enthusiastic and compassionate, and it was great to have the change to work with them. Hopefully I'll be able to help again next year!

After a short weekend break at home, I headed to Guate to pick up Mom and my Uncle Gus, who came to visit for a week! One of my neighbors, who owns the eco park down the road, offered to take me to pick them up in his truck. Thus they were saved the bumpy, sweaty, three hour chicken bus ride from Guate to my site:) I'll expand on their visit later this week (it's getting past my bedtime). And yes, that's right, I'm on the internet at 9:30pm, in the comfort of my own home! I finally broke down and bought internet, and it's WONDERFUL! Ok, maybe this is Peace Corps light, but I'm over worrying about that:) Besides keeping me better connected to the world outside of Soledad Grande, it'll be helpful whenever I need to do some research for work.

Night everyone! To those of you in NY, hope you're surviving the snow!

In my family, February is birthday month, what with Mom and I both celebrating birthdays. As well as an uncle, a cousin, and plenty of extended family. But one of the families I work with in Pino Ducle definitely beats us- they have 7 kids, and 4 or 5 of them have their birthdays this month! (Erika's birthday is the same as yours Mom!)I'm really looking forward to a visit from my mom and uncle at the end of this month, we'll get to celebrate our birthdays together!

So this is getting bad, I know. I only wrote once in January! But I guess that means I’m keeping busy, huh? I’m working on getting a usb modem for internet, or wireless…I’m feeling a little conflicted about it though. I mean, I’m supposed to be roughing it, right? I mean, this is Peace Corps! But on the other hand, I can afford it with my Peace Corps salary…and it would be SO convenient! So we’ll see…

So the meeting in Miramundo, the neighboring aldea, that I had planned a couple of weeks ago…kind of fell through. Meaning that I showed up, but nobody else. Bummer. However the next week I ran into some lady on the road who said she wanted to go but forgot. She belongs to a microcredit lending group though, and invited me to come to that meeting this week. Hopefully I’ll find some interest there!

Looks like I’m well on my way to working in two schools as well! Last week I sat down and planned with teachers in Pino Dulce- we’re going to start doing a school abonera, then eventually do tire gardens. I also met with the teachers in my aldea, and they sound like they’ll be supportive too. I’m looking forward to working with kids; I’ve never had the opportunity to actually teach, so that part is a little scary, but I like to be around them. In accordance with the suggestions from training, I’m working with the básico kids. Here in Guate, there’s primaria (K-6th grade), and básico (7th-12th). In my aldea as well as Pino Dulce, last year was the first year that they offered 7th grade. They got government funding to open these schools, and now this year they’re both offering 7th and 8th grades. So those are the kids that I’ll be working with. (Before this, any kid who wanted to study past 6th grade had to travel half an hour to an hour and live with relatives in town during the week to study).

Nothing too exciting happening culturally here- everybody is finishing up the corn harvest, broccoli is about done too. No holidays until Holy Week, which sounds like a huge deal here. Things are pretty smooth right now. Last Sunday I attended the festivities of the graduation of the daughter of a family I work with. She’s just turning 19, and just finished nursing school- the first in her family to graduate any kind of professional program, as far as I know. Pretty cool, huh? There was a mass in honor of the graduates, then a graduation ceremony, and then a dinner and dance at the family’s house. Here they mostly just dance to Durangense music, and it’s all partner dancing. And it’s kind of old fashioned- the guys ask the girls to dance, never the other way around. It was actually kind of funny this time though, because there were a lot more guys than girls (teenage boys always seem to come out of the woodwork wherever there’s a dance). So it was pretty hard for any of us to leave the dance floor without getting cornered by two or three guys. Maybe that sounds sketchy, but it was a lot more fun than the other dances I’ve been to here- there weren’t any drunk guys, there weren’t any old creepy guys, and I think I danced with at least four guys my height or taller! That in and of itself is a miracle-there’s only one woman my height in our town, the rest are considerably shorter, and there aren’t that many men my height.

Unfortunately the internet isn't letting me upload pictures today, so I'll update next week.

So I’m not going to complain too much about the cold weather, because I know it’s much colder in NY, but it’s cold here! I stayed in my site for New Years as well as Christmas, and had a good time. I didn’t quite make it till midnight (lame, I know), but I did wake up to all the firecrackers. It’s funny, but New Year’s in some ways seems kind of like a repeat of Christmas to me. Although they’re two very different holidays, they ‘re both celebrated with firecrackers, tamales, and fruit punch. On New Year’s Day my soccer team had a game in a neighboring town. The field was all dirt and so uneven that about half my team ended up with bloody knees. (For those of you who have played soccer with me, you’ll be surprised to know that I was actually not one of them!) We lost that game, as well as the three other games we’ve played since them. But the last game we only lost 6-4, which boosted the team’s morale a little bit.

Last week I harvested coffee again, this time with a different family. In an eight hour day, I cut a grand total of 43lbs. People who are good at it can cut up to 150 or more pounds per day. Generally people pay Q35/100lb to people who harvest coffee, which would have come out to Q16 for me. That’s $2.00. Let’s just say that I’m not planning to earn a living harvesting coffee. But for people who are good at it, it’s good money by Guatemalan standards, I guess.

On Monday of this week I went to the next town over, where I’m hoping to start a women’s group to work with. A while ago I met the president of Mi Familia Progresa, which is a government program that gives financial aid to families with three or more children under the age of 15 enrolled in school. It seems like a good idea- they only get the money if the kids regularly attend school and their parents take them to the doctors’ office regularly as well- but I guess who knows if the parents actually spend the money to feed their kids better or not. So anyways, the president said that it sounded like what I’m here to teach people really goes along with the goals of her group, and invited me to their monthly meeting. So I got there at 2pm, only to find out that the meeting had been changed to 3pm, and it actually got rolling around 3:30pm. (Guatemala is really making me a more patient person). By this time there were at least 150 women, and probably 75 kids under the age of 3. So basically there was a lot of background noise. The president stood on a chair to lead the meeting, and after about 45 minutes turned the chair over to me to introduce myself. Unfortunately, people were kind of done with standing there and listening, so they mostly just didn’t anymore. I know I’m soft spoken, but I really did my best to make myself heard. However, the president also happens to be an evangelical preacher, so her voice carried a heck of a lot better than mine. Haha. Oh well, I somehow told everybody what my deal is, and got a meeting set up for everyone interested next week. We’ll see how many of the 150 show up!

Another exciting development in my life as a food security volunteer- I have worms! And no, I don’t mean parasites, I mean worms to make fertilizer out of my kitchen scraps and cow manure. Definitely not something I was ever into before, but it’s something we learned about in training, and I’m kind of excited about it. I visited a fellow volunteer who works at a coffee cooperative that uses worms to compost the coffee husks, and then uses the compost to fertilize the coffee plants. The president of the coop is my friend’s counterpart, and he was nice enough to give me a couple of handfuls of worms! The poor things hung out in a plastic bag in my room for a couple of days until I could get a big plastic tub to make a home for them, but now they’re happily making the cow manure from my pasture into some super fertilizer for my garden (which has yet to exist…but that’ll have to wait for the rain!).

This weekend I traveled to Esquipulas with two volunteers who live near me, and we met up with some other volunteers that live in that direction. Friday is THE day to go to Esquipulas, which has a gorgeous church built in the 1500s- apparently it’s considered the prettiest church in Central America. It’s also famous for a statue of Jesus on the cross carved out of some kind of black wood. So every year on the 15th of January people travel from all over to visit, because it’s the day of El Señor de Esquipulas. And man were there ever a lot of people there- we waited in line over two hours to see the statue, and that was on Saturday!

When I got home on Sunday, I found out that my neighbor had her baby. My other neighbor had a baby on Thanksgiving, so the neighborhood is growing! But something really interesting I learned, thanks to my host mom, is about the typical diet of women after they give birth. It’s very common in this area, but I don’t know about Guatemala on the whole. So anyways, for the first 40 days, the mother is supposed to eat chicken soup, toasted white bread, cheese, and hot chocolate…and I think that’s it. Apparently that’s supposed to help the woman start to make milk. No vegetables for the first three months, because vegetables “inflate” the stomach, so if you want to get back to the shape you had before being pregnant, you’re not supposed to eat veggies. Also no eggs, though I’m not sure why. Interesting though…

I’m trying to get myself organized for the week today- I’m making pancakes with my women’s group here on Tuesday, Wednesday running errands (and using the internet, which is why this won’t be posted till then), meeting (hopefully) with women in Miramundo on Thursday, making a eucalyptus salve (for coughs and congestion) in Pino Dulce on Friday, and attending a community meeting here in Soledad Grande on Saturday. Busy week! But that’s how I like it- now that my calendar is starting to fill up, I’m feeling better!

Side note- it’s 1:30 on Monday as I’m writing this, and I’ve already felt two tremors today! That makes four or five since I’ve gotten to Guatemala (one on Thanksgiving)!

Here´s my host sister and her aunt going for a stroll the other day, and Emelin showing off her new flip flops (thanks Mom!) and flashing Christmas light necklace (thanks Dad!) on Christmas day.

Hey everybody,

Well a cold front is sweeping into town along with the arrival of the new year- brrr!. My thermometer says fifty something, but I’m wearing lots of layers and a hat and scarf- to bed! But I hear it’s snowing in NY, so it could be worse.

I got through Christmas all right, despite missing home more than usual. On Christmas Eve day my host mom and I were planning to make tamales and punch, and I was excited to learn how! But she got some kind of stomach bug the night before, and was in no shape to be in the kitchen that day. She had one of her nieces come over to help, and between the two of us we got everything prepared. (I guess that’s one of the perks of being one of the youngest of 18 children- you’ve always got nieces and nephews to help you out!) Later that afternoon I went to soccer practice, which was fun as usual. I think my favorite part of practice is scrimmaging (well duh). But the best part is that we never have enough girls to field a full game, so the coach has a bunch of the boys hanging around the field play with us. So we’re all in our teens and twenties, but the only boys aloud to play are like 12 and under, and when one team has more boys than the other, can you ever tell! While girls here really aren’t encouraged to play sports (which makes it all that much cooler that my tiny aldea has a girls’ team!), I think boys are born playing soccer. They’re pretty incredible, for their age and size.

Ok, I’m getting sidetracked. So after practice, I went to church. No familiar Christmas carols, no candlelight singing of Silent Night…but it was still touching. At the very end, the man leading the service (the church shares a priest with a bunch of other churches, so some men in the congregation take turns preaching) said some closing words and said for everyone to give each other an abrazo de Navidad, or a Christmas hug. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed hugging since I arrived at my site (people pat each other on the shoulder, or shake hands, but hardly ever hug), but I found myself tearing up as the girls from my soccer team, my neighbors, the women I work with, etc. came up hugged me. Just goes to show you that Christmas spirit can really be found everywhere. Sniff sniff.

But speaking of Christmas, the subject brought about a very shocking discovery to me about the practices of Evangelical Christians here in Guatemala- they don’t celebrate Christmas! I guess I’ve always taken it for granted that that’s one practice that all Christians have in common, celebrating the birth of Christ, but apparently not. My counterpart is an Evangelical pastor, and she was happy to fill me in on their beliefs regarding the subject. So according to her, Christmas is a pagan holiday. You see, 2,600 years before Christ was born (approximately, I’m assuming), a widow become pregnant. People assumed that it was immaculate conception, and began worshipping her and her son on her son’s birthday, which was December 25th. The bible doesn’t say the date of Jesus’ birth, so they thus think that it’s wrong to celebrate it, especially on a day which has pagan roots. Also, as far as Christmas trees go, this tradition came about because people worshipped this idol under a pine tree, or something like that. And when Santa Clause says hohoho, he’s laughing at the suffering of Christ.

I apologize for the lack of organization and clarity in the relation of this information…but that’s about how it came across to me. And while it probably sounds like I’m scoffing, I’m really not, well maybe only half scoffing. I mean, I obviously don’t agree with her, but isn’t it fascinating to think that we claim to practice the same religion? It’s amazing to me to think how many different ways that Christianity is practiced around the world, and how divided people can be within the same religion. Because let me tell you, the Catholics in my town think the Evangelicals are pretty crazy (what with their Christmas shunning, speaking in tongues and fainting during worship), and the Evangelicals think the Catholics are sadly misled (with their litany reciting and praying to the Virgin Mary). Yet they somehow all manage to get along, as long as the subject of religion isn’t brought up!

So, despite this heartfelt discussion with my counterpart, I still went to mass on Christmas Eve. Christmas day I went with my host family to my host dad’s grandparents’ house in a neighboring aldea. We ate, chatted, picked lemons and guayabas, ate and chatted some more. It was a relaxing day, and I kept busy enough to keep from being too homesick. It was a little odd, no Christmas music, no presents- that’s one thing that it seems Guatemalans just aren’t into. I mean, there was the usual giving of leftovers and produce (we left with a sack of lemons!), but they just aren’t hung up on the commercialism of Christmas like us Americans. It was really kind of refreshing. (And made me feel a little guilty about all those packages I got in the mail last week…). But all in all, a different, but good Christmas.

But now it’s back to work! (Well almost, we’ve still got New Year’s!) Just kidding, I’m still hard at work. It’s encouraging how many people in the community have been asking me for help with composting and asking about my work general. I’m really grateful to the volunteer I replaced for all the work she did here, and for getting the word out about Peace Corps. Hopefully I’ll be able to continue her good work and expand on it!

This is the last time I’ll get a chance to use the internet before Christmas, so MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! To all my family and friends, know that I’m thinking of you and miss you all very much. A special thanks to all of you who have sent mail- much appreciated!

Here’s a picture of my Christmas tree, for those of you who asked! (Notice the bright wall hangings in the background? My host mom kindly decorated my room for me. The towel on the left has white tail deer on it, how did she know? Haha)

Let me see here, what’s new since last week…Thursday I went with a family in my community to pick coffee. They have land about an hour away, so we left about 5:30am. It was a freeeeeeeeeezing cold ride in the back of a pickup…but once we got down off the mountain things really warmed up, and I was sweating by midmorning. But before we got started picking coffee, they made a fire to make coffee and heat up beans and tortillas. As far as I can tell Guatemalans don’t believe in working on an empty stomach!

As far as picking coffee goes, to me it seems a lot like picking blueberries. For this first harvest, all the coffee isn’t ripe, so you go through and only pick the bright red ones, leaving all the green ones behind. The bushes (or are they trees?) are bigger than blueberry bushes though, and although the fruit looks delicious…it doesn’t have too much taste. We stopped at lunchtime to make another fire and cook ramen noodles (with tortillas of course), and then finished up by 3:30 or so. They kindly told me that “me abundó”, that I picked a lot, but I think I only picked about 40 pounds, max. If you’re good, you can pick 80 or 100 pounds, or more, in a day! Maybe I’ll do better next time…

Yesterday I went with my women’s group to a market in a nearby city to sell jam that they’ve made. They make pineapple, strawberry and apple jam, as well as spicy veggies (carrots, broccoli and cauliflower canned with jalapeno peppers). Pretty good stuff. While they were selling, I explored the market a bit, and did some shopping for my host mom. She asked me to pick up the ingredients for “ponche”, a fruit punch that seems to be THE drink for Christmas around here: a pineapple, a cantaloupe, a papaya, a coconut, grapes, raisins, prunes, and rosa de Jamaica (not exactly sure what this is, some kind of dried flower?). Sounds pretty good, huh? People here are pretty stymied when I tell them that we don’t make ponche for Christmas, nor tamales.

So I guess that’s it for now. Wishing everyone a safe and happy Christmas! I’ll be with you in spirit!

Sea turtles being released into the Pacific

A picture perfect sunset

My host dad spreading fertilizer

Me with my Christmas tree! (My host mom took the picture, and she kinda missed the tree...) I seem to be getting behind here- I’ve got a lot going on!

Merry (almost) Christmas everyone! Honestly, time is flying, I can’t believe next week is Christmas! Lucky for me, my town definitely has the Christmas spirit!

Yesterday I went with my host dad, his brother and father to learn how to plant potatoes. It amazes me how incredibly physical farming is here- EVERYTHING as far as tilling is done with a hoe: no tractors, no horses. The day before they’d finished “picaring” or preparing the soil, and they were starting to make shallow trenches. In these trenches they threw down some “gallinaza” (organic fertilizer- chicken manure), and then some chemical fertilizer (15-10-10, for those who may be interested). They did this by tying a cut open grain sack around their waists, like an apron, then gathering it up with one hand and filling it with the fertilizer.

They let me plant potatoes, which I carried same as the fertilizer, placing them about a foot apart in the trenches, and then somebody came behind me with a hoe covering up the potatoes. Pretty labor intensive, huh? It was a cool experience though, and I really enjoy hanging out with the men in my family- even though I’m a girl they treat me with respect, answer all my questions, and let me do pretty much anything.

On the way back home, we cut a Christmas tree! My host parents got one for themselves, and then told me I should pick a little one out for my room too. Best Christmas present ever! Now it’s no blue spruce, it’s really more of a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, but I love it just the same. Although I’ll still be working up until Christmas Eve, there are a lot of Christmas-y things going on around here which should be fun. This Friday I’m teaching one of my women’s groups how to make Christmas sugar cookies, which should be a lot of fun. One of the women in the group offered up her adobe oven for the occasion. Also, the posadas start tomorrow. In order to commemorate Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem, every evening until Christmas Eve, starting tomorrow, people in the community gather at a different house each night. There’s singing, reading of the Christmas story, and most likely some kind of snack. It sounds like a pretty big deal, because some of the families I know who are “receiving a posada” in their house this weekend are already decorating and preparing.

Also on the subject of Christmas, I got together with a group of almost 20 volunteers this weekend to celebrate Navidad a little early. One of our fellow PCVs is lucky enough to have his site in a teeny town RIGHT on the beach, and he was able to find a house for us to rent for the weekend, literally RIGHT on the beach. I called Mom while sitting on the beach and sweating, and she told me it was 13 degrees and snowing at home. Weird, huh? (Don't get too jealous, I got home from the beach on Sunday night and bundled up in long johns and my fleece hat for bed!) But anyways, it was a lot of fun. The Pacific coast is pretty harsh though- apparently a lot of people drown because the current is so strong. So needless to say, it was more wading than swimming. One day we did visit a tide pool, which was calm enough to really swim. That evening we got to watch baby tortoises being released into the ocean. The PCV works with a park that hatches and releases sea turtles (an endangered species, partially b/c the sale of eggs is a pretty hot market). Pretty cool as well- check out the video!

Wow, so I guess I’ve gotten a bit behind here…but let’s just say it’s been a super busy couple of weeks! So almost two weeks ago was our swearing in ceremony at the ambassador’s house, which was pretty cool. We all brought two members of our host families, and as you can see, my host mom had a traje made for me for the occasion. I was kind of blown away by the gesture, since I know they aren’t cheap! The blouse is called a huiple (wee peel), the belt is called a faja and the skirt is called a corte. Usually they aren’t made from the same material…but I guess doña Rosa was really into this bright red fabric :) Haha, do I look tall or what in these pictures? Afterwards Kamille, Stephen, Erin and I took our families to Pollo Campero for lunch. It’s kind of a glorified Guatemalan KFC if you ask me, but they all were excited to go, and it really did end up being a good time. It was fun to get everybody all together!

I got to my site just in time for All Saints Day, which people celebrate here by decorating graves with flowers and all kinds of stuff. I went with the volunteer I’m replacing and a family from our village. The rest of last week I spent following Lauren around and meeting people as she said goodbye to them, and getting to know the lay of the land a little. Houses are almost as spread out here as they are at home (ok maybe not quite as much…) but the biggest difference is that all the roads are dirt (well mud right now), with short cuts through pastures and cornfields. Needless to say it can be a little disorienting. But it’s really beautiful here!

I stayed with Lauren at her house last week, but then Friday night finally got moved into my new house! I’ve got a pretty big room with a small family. The couple, Soledad and Nando, are in their 20s, and have a cute 2.5 year old daughter named Emelin. She’s rather mischievous, but fun to play with. She asks me at least 10 times a day “Y tú mama? Y tú papa?”. I’m trying to teach her to say Nueva York…but she hasn’t quite got it yet. So besides organizing myself and my stuff, and the furniture and dishes I bought from Lauren (THANK YOU by the way, it’s made my life a ton easier!) this weekend, I also got out a bit. I went to a graduation party on Saturday (for a kid I’d never met before, of course), and mass on Sunday, and then novenario services both days. It’s like a short church service that’s given in honor of someone on the 7th year anniversary of their death, for nine days in a row. With all this Catholicism, I’m starting to cross myself a lot! Haha. Religion is a funny thing here. The idea of different Protestant denominations is rather foreign- people look at me a bit cross-eyed when I say I’m Methodist. You’re either Catholic or Evangelical…or I suppose heathen, but I haven’t met any of those yet . But despite not being Catholic, I really did enjoy the services I attended this weekend- good messages, and four acoustic guitars that were actually in tune! Amazing!

As for work, well it’s gunna be a little slow to start I think. First off, the dry season is just about to start, making it an inopportune time to plant anything, because most people don’t have enough extra water for a garden. Also, it’s apparently going to get very cold. Brrr. It’s already cold! (Even when the thermometer says 60, I’m wearing multiple layers and a hat- maybe the constant mist and fog make it feel colder?) Also, I don’t know many people yet, or know my way around. So at the meeting of my women’s group today we planned out a bunch of visits to the houses of the women in the group, so I can meet their families, learn how to get to their houses, and see the gardens and compost piles that they’ve been working on. I’m excited for this weekend though, because I’ll be traveling to a neighboring town with two women in my group to learn how to make sausage, cheese and jam. Strange combination I guess, but a local Ag group is putting the workshops on for free, and it sounds like a cool opportunity. I’m staying the night with a volunteer that lives there, and then Sunday a bunch more women from our village are going to meet up with us for a fruit and veggie exchange. Since my site is so cold, they can only grow vegetables (corn, broccoli, cauliflower, and potatoes are the main crops, some cabbage too), but this other town, only about an hour away, grows all kinds of fruits. I don’t know how long these exchanges have been going on, but it’s a great way for them to make some money and add some fruit to their diet.

Guess that’s it for now! I hear the post office here is less than reliable, so Mom’s sending a test package. Give her a call if you want my address!

Hi all,I spent a very full five days in my site in Jalapa last week, getting to know my village! I feel pretty lucky that I'm replacing a volunteer, first of all because she's already done so much work there, and secondly, because she's been able to answer a ton of my questions! I spent the week going to meetings with her, getting to know the area, and meeting a lot of people that live there. The first meeting was with the women's group that is our counterpart agency. It's a microcredit lending group that gives agricultural loans to its members. They seem like a great group of women- many of them already have their own gardens and compost piles and are interested in expanding the project and getting more people involved. The one difficulty I can already see is timeliness though...the 9am meeting didn't start until 10 and some people didn't get there until 11! Guess they're just on Guatemalan time...The second was a community meeting in a nearby aldea (village), called Pino Dulce (Sweet Pine). The previous PCV worked with only two families there, but she invited the whole community to the meeting to see if we could rustle up so more interest for me to work there. So she explained what she's been doing, I introduced myself and explained that I'm coming to help people with veggie gardens, compost, nutrition, chickens, maybe even cows, and then the women who've worked with the PCV said how much they've gotten out of the experience. At the end I asked for a show of hands to see if anybody was interested, and out of about 60 people...maybe 5 raised their hands. Sooooo that was a little depressing, but I'm hoping that they were just being shy. In general the people in my site seem pretty quiet and reserved, but very nice. We visited a lot of neighbors, and I don't think we walked away from one house without being fed or given food, whether it be a cup of coffee, a piece of bread, a head of broccoli or a bag of potatoes! So I'm not going to starve. Most families are supported by agriculture, growing mostly broccoli, potatoes and corn, and maybe some carrots and cabbage. Since the elevation is so high and it tends to be pretty cold, that's about all you can grow as far as "large-scale" agriculture goes. Most of the broccoli goes for export to El Salvador, I think. There is also a lot of dairy in the area, meaning that a lot of families have a couple of cows in the back yard. It's pretty cool that they make cheese locally though!I also figured out my living situation- for at least the first three months I'll be living with a young couple ( I think the wife is 25), and their 2.5 year old daughter. They seem very sweet, and my room is really big! I'm planning on setting up part of it as a kitchen so that I can cook for myself. The house is close to a pretty main road, which will be handy for transportation, but there is a pasture with cows in the back yard, so I should feel right at home! The day before heading back to San Bartolo, I met up with two fellow PCTs who have sites pretty close to me. We went to the eco park just down the road from my site (where we stayed for Field Based Training), to do some hiking and spend the night. The pics above are from our visit- the waterfalls aren't quite like Taughannock, but still pretty! Now we're finishing up training, and will have our swear-in ceremony (where we take an oath and officially become volunteers) at the end of next week. I can't believe how fast time is flying by! I'm pretty excited to get settled into my site and start working, but am definitely going to miss my fellow trainees a lot. We're basially spread out all over the country! If I want to visit my friends in Huehuetenengo, its' going to take me a good 16 hours or so by bus...Miss everybody at home, and the fall weather!

Hey everybody!

These last couple of weeks have been kind of crazy! After getting back from field based training, we had a Spanish test/interview to gauge our progress since the beginning of training. Apparently we’ve improved, because they decided to have us do independent study instead of continuing to have classes with a teacher! It’s been nice to be able to decide what to study ourselves- we’ve been working on the subjunctive tense, reading the paper, watching some movies our ex-Spanish teacher recommended, we wrote our resumes in Spanish, and have spent more time on tech-related stuff. This was a pretty big week because we had to prepare a presentation on nutrition for Thursday night as well as organize for a chicken vaccination “campaign” in our town Friday morning. On top of all of that, we were going crazy waiting for Thursday morning to find out what our sites for the next two years are!

So Thursday morning our technical trainer and the two people in charge of the Sustainable Ag program rolled into San Bartolomé a whole hour ahead of schedule with our site announcements! I really wasn’t sure where I wanted to go, and had tried really hard not to set my heart on any particular site, since trainees really have very little input on where we end up. But…(drum roll please!) …it ends up that I’m going to JALAPA, to the site that we visited for field based training! I honestly wasn’t expecting it, because it’s one of only three sites for food security volunteers that is strictly Spanish speaking. In the other six sites, the volunteers will need to learn an indigenous language. Although that’s an awesome opportunity…I can’t help but be happy that I get to stick with Spanish! The craziest thing about all of this is that the volunteer who I’ll be replacing is from Rochester, NY, and then the new marketing volunteer who will be living less than an hour away from me is from Vestal, and went to Cornell! I guess kids from CNY get sent to Jalapa- what a small world.

Tomorrow is counterpart day at the Peace Corps Office. We’ll be meeting the Guatemalan who will be working closely with us for the next two years. My counterpart is the president of a women’s group that does micro financing for food security. That’s about all I know so far…so hopefully I’ll have more to say next time! Tuesday morning we have a couple of sessions at the office, and then we’re all heading to our sites until Sunday to meet people, find somewhere to live, learn about what we’re going to be doing, what the needs of the community are, etc. I’ll be staying with the volunteer that I’m replacing, and I’m really excited that I’m going to have the chance to learn a lot from here before she moves back to the states. Since when I actually move to my site for good in three weeks I’ll be traveling alone, I’m going to try and move as much of my stuff as possible on Tuesday since I’ll have my counterpart to help me with my luggage. It’s not that I brought all that much stuff with me…a backpack and two suitcases. But I’m not sure how easily everything is going to fit back in my luggage. Plus, I can’t imagine keeping track of three bags on a chicken bus. There’s no way I could bring it on the bus with me, meaning the ayudante (the guy who collects money and helps out the driver) would throw it up on top of the bus, and who knows if it would make it to my final destination! Anyways, however I get there, I'll be really excited to arrive. I'm so excited to get a better idea of what my personal job is, and actually get to work! The aldea (village, as in smaller than a town), is on top of a mountain at 8,000 ft., with beautiful views, but pretty cold temps. I'll be working in the communitiy that I'm living in, but also traveling to a couple of surrounding aldeas to work. I think I'm going to inherit a bike from the girl I'm replacing, so that'll be nice for getting around. She has done a lot of work with nutrition and family gardens, so I'm probably going to be expanding on that, trying to reach and include more people. Also, there's a lot of dairy in the area, so I'm hoping to be able to do some kind of secondary project with cows. We'll see!

Last Sunday was a ton of fun- most of our training class climbed Volcán Pacaya! We probably took about two hours to get to the almost top, where we relaxed and ate lunch. Then we hiked pretty darn close to the lava flows- our guide assured us it was safe! We even roasted marshmallows on the lava! There are a lot of volcanoes in Guate, and I’m hoping to have the chance to climb lots more these next two years!

Here are a couple of interesting, but probably fairly obvious things I’ve learned in Guate so far:

- You can “gravity flush” a toilet by just dumping enough water into the bowl until it drains. I learned this by necessity as the water in our town tends to stop running by noon or so every day…

- You can make perfectly good coffee by just boiling ground coffee beans in water. Who needs a coffee maker?

- Vehicles can last MUCH longer than Americans think they can. I don’t think there are many cars in our town that are under 15 years old, but they get people where they need to go just fine!

That's it for now, hope everybody is doing well at home!

It’s a rainy night here in Guate- por fin! It’s been extremely dry lately, but the rain finally kicked in this week. Hopefully it’s not too late for the crops! Harvests are predicted to be pretty low this year due to the drought.

But while it was raining this week in Sacatapéquez, the other 8 food security volunteers and I were in Jalapa for Field Based Training. We headed east last Sunday to visit four food security volunteers in the department of Jalapa, and spent the week visiting their sites. The first three nights we stayed with host families, and once again I got pretty lucky. While there wasn’t a light in my room, and I got bitten up by mosquitoes or fleas or spiders or something, my family was incredibly warm and welcoming. They have cows, so it was pretty cool to have a chance to learn something about dairy in Guate. Sounds like they mostly feed them corn stalks and pasture, but I was impressed that the son knew what I was talking about when I mentioned silage. I’m pretty sure nobody feeds silage or concentrates period here. I mean, the Guatemalan diet is based on corn, and livestock just gets what’s left over. Interesting though.

Hehe, what a funny looking cow! The A-frame type collar is to keep them from going through fences. The work we did while in Jalapa was great too. We started out the first few days working a lot with chickens. We learned how to vaccinate them, how to make feed by toasting, grinding and mixing corn, beans, egg shells, chicken bones, and salt, how to make some herbal remedies (like boiling basil and feeding the water to get rid of parasites), and a thing or two about chicken coops. I guess I’m not a huge fan of chickens, but I think it’ll be cool to have the chance to work with some kind of animal at least!

The next three nights we spent in an ecological park near another volunteer’s sight, and as part of our payment for staying there we built a terrace veggie garden. (The picture at the beginning of this post is a view from the park). In general, it amazes me that sheer slopes do not seem to faze Guatemalan farmers at all. Mountainsides that I wouldn’t want to walk up are planted to coffee, corn and beans. Pretty crazy, but I guess that since they do everything by hand, they don’t need to worry about whether or not a tractor could manage the slope. Anyways, terracing isn’t very common here anymore, apparently there were foreign engineers here a while ago really pushing it, but since then it’s been kind of dropped. Basically, building terraces is really hard work, and although there’s the obvious benefit of preventing soil erosion, it seems like a lot of people just aren’t convinced- I mean, I don’t think there’s a huge yield advantage. But in about three hours 11 of us were able to construct one good sized terrace and seed it to radish, lettuce, Swiss chard, cilantro, beans and carrots. We also mapped out four or five more terraces up the slope, using a level that we also made.

When we were done with everything on Friday, we came back a little earlier in the afternoon to the park, and the park owner had everything set up for us to go zip lining! I was kind of dubious at first…I’m not paranoid of heights, but I don’t love them. But in the end it was a lot of fun! The cables went across a valley, and then through the woods, making for some spectacular views.

(Here's a view across the valley where we zip lined, and then all of us getting ready to go! Kamille, Amy, Erin, me, Jared, Charlie, Stephen and Barrett)

Thursday and Friday mornings were spent giving charlas to some women’s groups. Mine was about nutrition and why vitamins are so important for a healthy diet. Since that site is pretty much at the top of a mountain (I think well over 7,000ft), they grow a lot of broccoli, peas, beans, etc., but absolutely no fruit. They can buy fruit in nearby markets, but it’s expensive, so people generally don’t, which makes it hard to get a good balance of vitamins. Also, we spent one afternoon cooking with the women in the group. The woman who’s house I went to was the farthest away-to get to her house we walked through all these tiny paths, over fences, through cornfields, and finally ended up at a place called Mira Cielos (or look at the skies/heavens). It was absolutely gorgeous, and well worth the climb!

Saturday was definitely the highlight of the week for me though- we visited a lecheria!!! (A place where they make cheese!) It’s a pretty simple operation, they’ve got a little machine that separates the cream from the milk, and the package and sell the cream, and then make cheese from the rest. They guy running the place told me that they collect milk from about 24 local producers. One guy came in with two pails of milk, probably about 7 gallons each, and he told us it was from 10 cows. So…that makes about 112 pounds, or 11 pounds per cow. And since they only milk 1x…that’s 11 pounds per day. Wow. I wonder how much they could improve production just by milking 2x? I wanted to ask more questions…but I was about the only one very interested. (Other than my friend Laurie, who’s from a dairy and went to UW Madison- who would have guessed I’d have another dairy kid here in Guate!?) We’d been eating cheese from the lecheria all week, so I bought some to bring home to my host family. It’s a pretty salty fresh cheese, or queso fresco. Pretty good though, and only Q7 per pound! (Less than a dollar!) As if visiting the lecheria wasn’t cool enough, there was a guy there with a horse, and he wanted to let us all ride it! So I got to ride a horse! I guess it was more pony sized, but it was pretty well mannered. As with most other horses I’ve seen, they just use a kind of halter with one lead rope for a bridle, and the saddle is pretty simple and doesn’t have stirrups. I recently found out that we’re allowed to have horses as volunteers…so depending on where I end up living, I’m definitely counting that as a possibility! How cool would it be to have a horse?! And to actually use it for transportation, not just for kicks.

Guess that’s it for today. Hope everything is well at home! I apologize for my slow responses to emails, but I promise I will get back to you all!

Hi everybody,

Here's one of the floats in the parade on Tuesday!

I’m starting to realize that we arrived in Guate at a really good time. First we had a solid week and a half of feria in our town for the patron saint festival on the 24th of August, and Tuesday was Independence Day! One of the big traditions here is for people to run antorchas, or torches, from different locations back to their home town. I haven’t gotten a really clear story of why that’s the tradition, but it has something to do with bringing the flame of Guatemalan independence to your town. The traffic was so awful on Monday afternoon that we were driven back from the Peace Corps center instead of taking buses, what with all the torch running going on. Plus people throw bags of water (remember the plastic milk pouches we had in elementary school? Same idea), at the torch runners, and anybody else that might be in the way. And if they’re feeling particularly vicious, they throw bags of sand. So I guess running a torch comes with its risks…We got back to San Bartolo right in time to see a bunch of people running into town with torches, plus a bunch of people on motorcycles too. They all brought their torches to a stand in front of the town hall, where there was quite the celebration going on. All the schools in town have marching bands of sorts, and they all did a performance, which was pretty school. Even the preschoolers have a band! They didn’t exactly have it all together…but they were pretty cute!

Tuesday started off with a bang, literally, with firecrackers going before 6 am (and I wonder why I can’t sleep past 6 here…) Peace Corps gave us the day off, which was great, because we got to see all the festivities. The parade started at 8ish, and went on for quite a few hours. First everybody gathered in the plaza, the national anthem was sung, and then the parade started. Now, in the States, parades are pretty much for kids. But here, parades are pretty much just kids. Meaning that just about every kid enrolled in school in San Bartolo was in the parade! All the marching bands played, a lot of the kids were dressed up in indigenous clothing representing different departments (states), there were even horses! This picture is of me with two of Stephen's host cousins. Later in the afternoon Kamille and I went back to the plaza to watch Erin play basketball- she started playing with a women’s team in town, and they had a tournament. One of the other teams had a mystery gringa playing for them- we have no idea where she came from, but definitely not Guate! I’m hoping to get to play some soccer here, but as far as I can tell there aren’t any women that play in my town…

The four of us PCVs did get an ultimate Frisbee game going tonight though, which was SO much fun! I haven’t played since high school I guess, but it was great! We got some friends to come (some women from Erin’s bball team, some family members, etc), plus some kids at the field joined in too. The best thing about ultimate is that it really doesn’t take long for people to learn, and all you really need is a little hand eye coordination and the ability to run. We played until dark, and with the warm weather it almost felt like a summer night at home- except that dark here is 6:30. Hopefully it’ll become a weekly thing!

Kamille, Erin and I made a major food discovery this week. Out of the 30 or so teeny stores in our town, we stumbled upon one that sells all kinds of chocofruta. This means mango, pineapple, coconut and grapes frozen and then dipped in chocolate and sprinkled with chopped peanuts. Absolutely divine, and only Q1 (less than 15 cents)! Also, it’s elote, or sweetcorn season here! YAY! I was kind of depressed to leave home right when the sweetcorn was about to get ripe, but luckily people eat it in Guate too. But instead of butter, they squeeze on lime juice and add salt. You should try it, it’s pretty good!

Hmm, I forgot to mention the weekend! Saturday morning all of us 32 trainees went to Iximche to watch a Mayan ceremony. Peace Corps apparently hired a Mayan priestess to teach us a thing or two about Mayan religion, and to hold a ceremony. The whole thing took about an hour and a half, since it involved praising/acknowledging all 22 or so gods. Basically the ceremony revolved around asking for blessings upon us as volunteers in Guate. Later we got to walk around some Mayan ruins, and then feasted on some typical Guate fair- tortillas, tamalitos, sausages, greens, and atol- a hot drink made of corn.

Wow, after all of this, you’re probably all thinking that I don’t work at all! Haha, not exactly, but training is pretty different than any other job I’ve ever had. I mean, where else outside of Peace Corps is part of your job getting to know a new culture and learning about your community? Monday was training at the PC center, and Wednesday was a combined Spanish class in Antigua with volunteers from a different community. Today we visited a volunteer who taught us to make strawberry jam- a great value added product! Then we visited Technologias Para Salud (Technology for Health), which is a company devoted to coming up with economical solutions to common health problems. We got a tour of their botanical garden and learned about the medicinal properties of a bunch of plants (did you know alfalfa is good for arthritis?), and learned how to make a eucalyptus balm- basically homemade Vick's.

Guess that's all for now, unfortunately my pics are uploading way too slowly tonight...I'll try again next time! Hope all is well at home!

Happy Friday!

I’ve officially been in Guatemala one month!!

So here are our radishes as of a week ago- looking pretty good, huh? Also, this is garden number two, which is at Erin's host mom's house.

Yesterday was kind of a big day for us here in San Bartolomé- we gave our first charlas! Even though I’ve given plenty of presentations in the past couple of years (thank you comm 201 and dairy challenge) I was still kind of nervous about this one, because, let’s face it, middle school aged kids aren’t necessarily psyched about gardening. Plus, I was worried that we were going to run out of time and not be able to finish. But the kids actually got pretty into it! Most of the girls were in skirts, not very practical for gardening, but they were good sports and helped out anyways. I think my favorite part of the whole thing was being able to hand knives to a bunch of pre-teens and tell them to cut apart a couple of tires. Can you imagine that happening at T-burg? I don’t think so. I love that Guatemalans are so low key. As our tech trainer pointed out to us, most of these kids have been handling machetes since they were little!

Here's me overseeing things, my kids cutting apart a tire, and playing an icebreaker at the beginning.

Speaking of low key, you should see the transport system here. As I think I mentioned before, Guatemalans are amazing carpoolers. But while Americans worry about not filling buses past the posted capacity, Guatemalans worry about leaving ANY wasted space. While my fellow trainees and I were kind of taken aback at first by all the pushing and shoving and invading of personal space that is necessary to ride on the so called chicken buses (read recycled US school buses), we’ve really gotten used to it. However, we had a slight mishap on the way back from the PC training center this Tuesday. It was getting late, so we hopped on the first bus we could, which was absolutely packed. Erin and I managed to stay near the front of the bus (yes, yes, we WERE standing in front of that white line, while the bus was in motion, much to the chagrin of whoever was in charge of putting that sticker in the front of all US school buses). But anyway, Erin and I got off the front of the bus at our stop, assuming that Kamille and Stephen would hop off the back (yup, those emergency exits get everyday use here in Guate). But as soon as we got off, the bus took off, leaving nothing but a cloud of black smoke. No Kamille, no Stephen. Oops. They ended up getting off at the next stop, and then catching the next bus back to our town. The worst part is that they had to maneuver their way off the buses carrying their backpacks plus two costales (grain sacks), one full of supplies for our charlas, and the other full of dirt and worms to start a worm compost here in San Bartolo. Haha, as if people don’t think us Americans are crazy enough....

Our training session on Tuesday was really good though. We had a volunteer from Jalapa (a departmento/state in eastern Guate) come in to talk to us about nutrition and cooking, which is a part of the program that I’m starting to get more excited about. At first I think the idea of teaching nutrition kind of scared me, I mean, what do I know about nutrition? But the idea is to teach very basic nutrition, mostly focusing on encouraging people to eat a more balanced diet. And I love to cook, so I think teaching nutrition and cooking classes could be really fun. Anyways, the most exciting part for me and another trainee who’s from Wisconsin was finding out that there is a lot of dairy in Jalapa! I had kind of put the idea out of my head that I might be able to work with cows at all, but this volunteer said she thinks there are a lot of opportunities to get people to do more with their milk other than just sell it (yogurt, cheese, pasteurization, etc). But we’re not going to find out our sites until October 8th, so I guess there’s no point in getting anxious yet!

A couple of people have asked me what a regular day is like for me here. Well, it generally starts pretty early. I’ve always thought of myself as an early riser, but I almost always wake up by 5:30 or 6 here without my alarm! I generally shower right when I get up, b/c it’s hit or miss if the water is running in the evening, and PC policy states that we are expected to bathe every day, haha. I am lucky though, because the water is usually hot! Then I eat breakfast with doña Rosa, which might be fried plantains with black beans (delicious!) tortillas with melted cheese, or chocolate cornflakes, to name a few. Generally we have Spanish class from 8-12, which is held in one of our houses (we rotate week to week). Then in the afternoon we either have Spanish or technical training (like the charlas yesterday, working in our gardens, today we had a cooking class with a volunteer, etc). We have 12-1 to eat lunch with our families, which is generally the biggest meal of the day here. Tuesdays we head to the PC headquarters, about 20 minutes away by bus, where we have sessions from 8-4:30ish. Saturdays we have Spanish class or an activity until noon, and then generally Saturday afternoons and all day Sundays are free. This Saturday we’re going to a Mayan ceremony, which should be interesting. A week from Sunday us Food Security trainees are heading to Jalapa for a week for field based training, where we’ll be working with three or four food security trainees to learn more about chickens, gardens, and nutrition. Exciting!

Oh, one other thing I wanted to mention- church. Guatemala is a very Christian country, basically divided about evenly between Catholics and Evangelicals. People don’t really understand when I say I’m Methodist, because here you’re either Catholic or Evangelical, there’s nothing in between. So anyways, I’ve gone to church a few times now, twice to mass and once to “un culto”, which is what they call Evangelical services. Catholic services seem comparable to the masses I’ve attended in the States, except with much louder music! The church in my town has a full blown band in the back of the church, and a huge speaker system. Then this Sunday I went to un culto with Erin and her family, which was a lot different. It was in somebody’s house I think, and there were only about 20 people there. Everybody brought their own bibles and hymnals, and there was a lot of singing! Even though the singing was very loud and rather off-key, I enjoyed it because everybody was really into it, and I recognized most of the hymns! A few women took turns leading the singing, another lead the reading of some New Testament, and then a guy did a sermon/meditation. As far as I can tell there’s no pastor, everybody takes turns leading the service, which is kind of cool. There were a lot of kids there, and it was fun because they all just sort of ran around the whole time. Basically, it’s a little more intense than TUMC, but less formal at the same time, if that makes any sense at all!

¡Muy buenos días a todos! Another busy week here in Guate! Thursday was Stephen’s birthday, so Kamille and Erin and I decided a cake was necessary. On our way home from training on Tuesday, we stopped at a big supermarket and were lucky enough to find brownie mix! So the night before we met up at my house, psyched to actually get the chance to bake something. (Don’t get me wrong, my host mom is a wonderful cook, and it’s nice to have someone cook for me all the time…but I can’t wait till I actually get to cook for myself again!) So, how hard can it be to make a batch of brownies? Harder than one might expect…First of all, I’m lucky enough to have an oven at my house, but it’s very teeny gas oven. We figured out how to light it, but then as we were mixing up the brownies (we just guessed how much oil and water to add, since we didn’t have measuring cups), we realized that even though they were chocolate brownies…they really didn’t taste like chocolate. So Erin ran ought to buy a chocolate bar to add to the mix…but could only find the kind of chocolate that’s melted with milk to make hot chocolate. So it’s basically just sugar, with a little cocoa added. But hey, we figured, it can’t make it any worse. And surprisingly enough, the brownies came out looking beautiful, even though it ended up being more like a cake than brownies. And even better yet, it tasted awesome! Actually pretty chocolaty. As a side note…has anybody out there seen the “mocholate” episode of Friends? Well I haven’t, but according to Kamille it’s a really funny episode where Monica is hired to make up recipes for a chocolate substitute named “mocholate”, which tastes horrible, and nothing like chocolate. While it might be a stretch to compare Guatemalan chocolate to said “mocholate”…let it suffice to say that Guatemalans don’t really do chocolate the American way. It’s pretty heavy on the sugar, and light on the chocolate. But I really have nothing to complain aboutJ And I did get another chance to cook this week! I offered to make breakfast for my host family, so I made French toast and smoothies with pineapple, strawberries and bananas. My host mom loved it, and surprised me by making apple papaya smoothies for breakfast the next day! (The produce here is great- there’s an incredible variety of fruits and veggies in the market near where I live). But yes, I actually do work here! We spent a lot of time this week working on our “huerto familiar” (family garden) at Stephen’s house, and actually ended up planting a second garden at Erin’s house because we had so many extra seedlings. We planted cauliflower, lettuce and tomatoes from seedlings, and then swiss chard, cucumbers and carrots from seed. The idea is for us to get some practice/experience with gardening here in Guate, so that when we get to our sites we can help families start gardens. (As well as encouraging our families here to grow veggies). Even though there’s so much agriculture here, most people that do grow veggies tend to grow only a few, and take most of them to market. So part of our job is to encourage people to grow a variety of produce for family consumption to help improve nutrition. While you don’t see protein deficiency in Guatemalan (since the diet is based on beans and corn), vitamin deficiencies are widespread because people don’t have the resources or knowledge to get all the essential vitamins. (When I say based on beans and corn, I mean most families eat beans at least two meals a day, and corn tortillas with 2-3 meals a day!) Also in technical training this week, we’ve been preparing for our first charla (talk/presentation) next week in the middle school here in San Bartolo. On Wednesday we met the kids that we’ll be working with next week and played some icebreakers to get to know them. So I’ve got a group of 19 kids, ranging in age from 12-16 (all in the same grade though). The other trainees in my town each have their own group, and this Wednesday we’re going to teach them how to make tire gardens and plant radishes. In order to get them psyched about growing veggies, we’re making it into a competition. So in two months, right before we move, we’re going to weigh the radishes that the kids grew, and the most successful group gets a prize! The tire gardens we made last week are doing well- our radishes are up already! A couple other interesting Guatemalan words: Seño: Pronounced SEN-yo, used to address young women, instead of señorita. Pan comido: One of my Spanish teacher’s favorites, it means that something was really easy, or literally, “bread eaten”. Vaya: Kind of the equivalent of vale in Spain, used to say yeah, ok, yup…or basically as an interjection anywhere in a conversation, as far as I can tell!Here´s my San Bartolomé group with our garden! (Stephen, Erin, Kamille and I)

Muy buenos días a todos! Here's my house in San Bartolo! Since my last post was about the week before last, I’ll fill you in on what I’ve been up to this week. First of all, technical training got a little more intense this week. Well maybe not intense, but we’ve just been doing a lot! We met with a volunteer who’s living in eastern Guatemala, and she told us all about what she’s been working on (which is what we’ll be doing!). She mostly works with a number of women’s groups in the communities surrounding her town, in which she teaches them about vegetable gardening and helps them to get started (she said a lot of them are now growing more veggies than their families can eat!), as well as chicken coop maintenance and vaccinations. On Thursday we learned how to make tire gardens, which is a project we’ll be starting here in a few weeks working with some elementary/middle school classes.Basically the process is 1. Cut handles into the tire (my new jackknife works great Dad!) 2. Cut the rest of the sidewall out of that side of the tire 3. Using a lot of force, flip the tire inside out 4.Make a bottom for the tire with some sticks and a piece of a grain sack 5. Mix up somenice dirt using sand, compost, and dirt and then 6. Plant some seeds! We planted cilantro and rabbano (radishes), since they don’t take too long to germinate.Here are: Kamille & Erin cutting the tire, us flipping the tire, and our final product!

On Friday we had a field trip to a town northwest of Chimaltenengo, where we visited a Food Security volunteer and a Marketing volunteer. It was a great experience to get a better idea of where volunteers live, what they’re working on, and what they do on an everyday basis. Then Saturday morning I had a fieldtrip toAntigua with my Spanish class, where we visited La Azotea, a coffee farm. We toured the coffee museum as well as the culture museum, both of which were pretty interesting. The coffee tour was my favorite though, because we got free coffee at the end!(Here's what coffee fruit looks like before it's ripe) Today was a nice relaxing day- run, church, some hw, lunch with my family, and then a hike with Erin and Julio. He’s a cousin to the family Kamille lives with, and he took us on a hike up the mountain to where we could get a good view of the three volcanoes that are nearby: Agua, Fuego, and Acaltenengo, as well as the city of Antigua. Pretty cool! Another fun experience came along with the féria this week (btw, apparently celebrations go on forever here…the actual holiday, the day of San Bartolomé, patron saint of our town, was this Monday, but festivities have dragged out a week on either side of the actual holiday). Basically, Guatemalans know how to celebrate! So anyways, as Erin and I were walking home for lunch on Monday, we found our path blocked by a huge truck holding giant speakers and an entire marimba band, tons of people watching, and a bunch of kids dressed up in random Halloween-ish costumes and dancing! It was possibly the most bizarre and entertaining thing I’ve ever seen. Marimba is THE music of Guatemala, and based on a wooden xylophone-ish instrument. We weren’t really sure what was going on, but when I asked my host mom about it, she said the dance was in honor of San Bartolomé. Pretty cool! I tried to upload a video...but it's taking too long. Next time!All right, that’s all for now! Keep those emails coming- I may not respond to them in a timely fashion, but I really do appreciate it! Hope everything is going well in the good old USA! Miss you all!

Hey everybody! Yay I finally got a computer to read a Word Document! So here's a blog entry that I wrote on August 23rd, telling about my first weekn and a half in Guate: Let me begin with Washington. After a very fun roadtrip with Sarah to visit Grace inRichmond, Sarah drove me to DC for orientationon the 11th. We spent an hour or so sightseeing (Washington Monument, World War II Memorial, the back of the White House, and some amazing smoothies), and then I sat down to a four hour intro to the Peace Corps with my 32 fellow trainees. Once we got through that, we quickly checked into our rooms, and then spread out for dinner. A bunch of us went to a Thai restaurant, which was a first for me, but delicious. After catching a few hours of sleep, we were in the lobby at 1:30 (AM!) to load up the bus and head to the airport. We had a three or four hour layover in Miami (where I used the rest of my “ PC dinner/travel” money to buy a charger for my iPod and A Year in France by Julia Child, which I’ve been dying to read ever since I finished Julie and Julia!), and touched down in Guatemala around noon. From there we were greeted by some PC/Guate staff members, herded onto a bus, and a short time later dropped off in Santa Lucia Milpas Altas, which is about halfway between Guatemala City and Antigua. We spent Wed afternoon through Friday at the training center, and stayed with local host families for those three nights. I ended up with Eclicelda, and her 8 year old grandson, Alan, who really kept me busy. We spent about four hours the first evening playing marbles, cards, and “escondite”, or hide-and-go-seek. The next night we played “electrizado”, or freeze tag, with some of the kids that live on the same street. It was a really good workout, as the street was STEEP, and the kids cheated, so I was “it” for longer than I’d like to admitJ. As for our PC training sessions, the consisted of medical sessions, vaccinations, safety and security sessions, overall PC/Guate introduction sessions, discussions about adapting to the culture, logistics, a language interview, a few sessions with our technical trainers, and our first couple of language classes.Saturday morning we were divided up and sent off to our separate communities. Our whole training class is basically divided into two groups, Municipal Development and Sustainable Agriculture. The later is divided into two subgroups, Ag Marketing and Food Security- which is my group! There are 9 of us, and four of us are living in San Bartolomé Milpas Alpas: Erin, Kamille, Stephen and I. So anyways, they stuffed us plus kids from two other towns and a few language teachers, plus at least a backpack of duffle bag per volunteer, into a van. And let me tell you, that van was NOT meant for 16 people! Haha, but I’m starting to realize that Guatemalans are just about the best carpoolers ever: you hardly ever see a vehicle going anywhere without it being filled to capacity and then some!So now I’m living with Doña Rosa and her two sons, Wiliam (18), and Carlos (23). Ihonestly almost cried when I walked into my new home for three months: it’s really a gorgeous place. The yard right inside thegate from the street is SO green, with geraniums, begonias, roses, and all kinds of flowers and plants everywhere. Doña Rosa has a vegetable garden up the hill from the house with corn, artichokes, plums, and peaches, and then a pear orchard on some land a ways away from the house. The house is kind of “open”, I guess would be the best way to describe it. There are three bedrooms in a row, then a kitchen, a room with an open stove where Doña Rosa cooks tortillas, and two bathrooms. The rooms are all in a row with doors going out to the porch, so you have to go outside to go into any other room. It’s different, but I really like it so far. And the weather is great, probably 60s and 70s most of the time, with rain every other day or so. And usually when it rains, it pours. It’s cool enough that I usually need a sweatshirt in the morning and night, but it’s nice. Kind of spring/fall NY weather really. A welcome relief after being in Richmond and DC with stifling heat and humidity! The first weekend with my new host family was a lot of fun! I worked on my tortilla making skills (it’s a LOT harder than it might seem to make a tortilla actually round), walked around town, went to Antigua for mass with doña Rosa and Wiliam, and FINALLY got to unpack! This past week has been extremely busy- 5 or 6 hours of Spanish class every day (we meet with our teacher, Mirsa, in one of our houses), a full day of training at the PC headquarters in Santa Lucia on Tuesday, and a number of sessions with our technical trainer, Davíd. We spent a while just learning more about our project, spent an afternoon learning how to use hoes and machetes (the two basic Guatemalan farming tools), and then another two afternoons making compost piles. To top it all off, this coming Monday is the day for the patron saint of our town (San Bartolomé of course), so there’s basically been a huge festivalgoing on since we got here! We’re talking Ferris wheels, merry-go-rounds, video arcades, all kinds of fair games, every kind of “street food” imaginable. (According to the PC nurses, we’re strictly forbidden from eating anything not made in our home or purchased from a restaurant…right.) But yeah, it’s a big deal.(Here are David, my tech trainer, with Erin and Stephen, two of my training town buddies) This morning my friend Erin ran in a 12k that was part of the festival, and won 2nd place in the women’s division! Granted, there weren’t a ton of women, but there were like 150 people overall, and the winner of the men’s division competed in the Beijing Olympics! About running…it’s a lot harder here than I’d anticipated. Earlier this week I went for a run with Erin…and almost died. We’re at almost 7,000ft elevation here, and everything is hilly, much different than good old CNY. To make it worse, we were scolded for running on the only flat streets around, which are apparently in a bad part of town. So now the only place to go is UP. I ran again today, and actually felt a lot better. After a good 15 minutes or so of serious uphill (which I’m planning on eventually being able to run without stopping!), it flattens out to a nice flat dirt trail, so it’s not as bad as it could be! Kamille, Erin and I after the race

Now for a couple good stories. One interesting experience I had this weekend was riding a Guatemalan Ferris wheel. So, I love Ferris wheels, and thought it would be fun. I was kind of surprised when they said it was Q15 for three people (almost $2), which seemed kind of steep for something like that here, but figured it would be worth it. And it definitely was, because we were on that Ferris wheel for almost half an hour! Erin and I tried to figure out their system…but couldn’t quite pin it down. It’s not like the states, where they fill the ride up, spin you around for two minutes, and then kick everybody off. Instead, they’ll empty three baskets or so, fill them up, go forwards (REALLY fast), then backwards (also faster than any Ferris wheel I’ve ever seen before), then repeat the whole process over again. And the seats were made of two-by-fours. And the welds that I could see around me were not that impressive. So….we were happy to make it off the ride alive. One other funny story- Here's my host mom doña Rosa with part of her pear harvest! So my Spanish has been serving me pretty well, but every once in a while…I just don’t understand. I’ve come to the conclusion that my host mom just doesn’t tell me everything, and my fellow gringos here agree that sometimes we just don’t have a clue what’s going on. Doña Rosa spent a couple of days this week picking pears, and Wednesday night I helped her deliver a cart full to a lady on the other side of town. Thursday she asked me if I would help later that night, so I worked on some homework until she said she was ready to go. But when I came out of my room…all the pears were gone except for a little bag. I said, “Oh wow, you’re all done!”, and she said “Yup, ready to go?”. So I assumed we were going to deliver that bag…but then we left without the pears. I then assumed we were just going to a store to buy something for dinner, but after she bought something, we headed the opposite direction from home. We went into a house, where there were a bunch of people sitting solemnly in chairs in one room, and then a bunch of women crying and praying in front of an alter of candles and flowers in the other room. So, we sat down, and sat there, and sat there. A lady came around with a tray and served us all tamales and bread and coffee on Styrofoam plates, and chatted it up with doña Rosa for a while. After she walked away, doña Rosa whispered to me that it was her father that had died. So did she tell me that we were going to a calling hours type thing, and I was either not paying attention, or she said a whole sentence that I thought I understood… but actually did not understand at all? I don’t really think so. I’m pretty sure she just said let’s go. I’ll leave you with a few of my favorite new Guatemalan Spanish words: “¡Púchica!”= wow! “¡Calidad!”= quality, or cool! “Chapines”= Guatemalans “Pura lata”= a useless person. The direct translation would be something like “That guy is so worthless, he’s a pure can! Haha. Now that I've got this blog thing figured out, I'll be sure to start posting more regularly!

Hey everybody!

So I finally got my act together and set up a blog! Unfortunately I do not have things figured out exactly yet. I thought I was being really smart and typed up this whole long blog post on my laptop, put it on my jump drive, and came to the internet cafe, thinking I would be saving myself lots of time and money. However this computer is not reading however it was formatted in Word, and I am almost out of time on the computer. So for this afternoon I will just say hi and that I am doing good! (And the reason I am not using any contractions is that I cannot seem to find the apostrophe key on the keyboard....) Hope everything is going well at home and I will be back with stories and pictures soon!