Today we went to the woods with a group of young people interested in tourism, to evaluate a new hike, and see what we would see.

And we were surprised.

None of the young folks had ever seen snow in the forest before, although they live just kilometers away. Up until today, some never thought it was possible.

They were pretty amazed.

Actually I was pretty amazed, too. It was like hail, in perfectly round balls, but covered the ground, emanating cold like a late summer snow-pack in the Cascades. But it wasn't in crunchy sheets begging you to post-hole - more like slippery sand.

So uphill wasn't bad. We slipped and slid up to the summit, where another wow-moment awaited us.

It's possible that more pictures of snow and ice have never been taken in such a short amount of time.

So many times we try to encapsulate in words or pictures or textbooks what simply can't be communicated in such a way. Today was a reminder that we usually learn the most when the world teaches us through our own sense of wonder; even more so when that sense of wonder is shared.

Thanks to the woods for a great day. I'd like to spend every Sunday of my life in the same way.

After events in January forced me to process leaving earlier on than I wanted to, I’ve realized it’s time to start reflecting on my time here. I’ll break it down by natural phases in the “PCV cycle”. Today’s reflection will be training... January to March, 2010 I arrived in Guatemala just over two years ago, with a backpack full of irrelevant clothing items and a flamboyant mixture of excitement and tension about what the future would hold. As the friend of many Guatemala RPCVs, and girlfriend of a Guatemalan I'd met at graduate school, I carried no small load of expectations.

My old room: is this heaven or is it hell...? I remember our training director picking us up at the airport. We rode to the training center on a chartered school bus and I sat next to a guy with whom I would soon share a training community, chatting about my plans to build a solar shower and keep a garden wherever I lived. (Riiiiight.) I like structure. I have to admit that I enjoyed training, from day one, perhaps a little more than the average trainee. My host mother was a good cook. She sort of understood the concept of vegetarianism. Each week we had four days of Spanish, one day at the training center, and a weekly tech training session. I hadn’t brought a computer, so each night meant studying, reading for pleasure, and chatting with my boyfriend long-distance. It felt like summer camp. There was always the looming doubt: would I stay? Could I deal two years without my boyfriend? I had some retrospectively pretty funny issues with cultural and linguistic misunderstandings. Yet... I was pretty content on a daily basis. The most uncomfortable parts of training for me were adapting my intestinal flora, living with a flea-infestation in my bed, and trying to connect with my semi-apathetic host family. (They had had between fifteen and twenty volunteers before me - I guess you lose track around ten? - and there were no small children in the house, as I had hoped, so it was pretty much like living in a boarding house at first.) I loved many parts of training, though. I loved Spanish lessons. I loved Field-Based Training. I loved giving my first hands-on lesson in the community. My boyfriend, coincidentally, was doing fieldwork in Guatemala, and I got to see him every two weeks. I loved that. I less than loved the absurdity of our project with the local mayor, but I could deal. And my host parents and I reached some sort of mutual admiration -- after two baby showers and countless Sunday mornings of hellfire and brimstone in church together. Then came the day of our site assignment. I got a medium-sized town of 6,000 whose name I couldn’t pronounce. I had wanted a tiny community in the middle of the wild. It was my fault, as I hadn’t spoken up to my program director. I was bummed, for the first time in country. After my site visit, though, I kind of got over it - the first hint of the crazy rollercoaster that would be Peace Corps service. My town seemed to have a lot of potential. Lots of forest, female office-mates, a non-creepy counterpart. It didn’t hurt my optimism that I was about to have the first long weekend with my boyfriend in three months. I was flying pretty high, in complete denial. At that point I even harbored secret fantasies that I might be a town hero after two years. If I’d only known...

On "Counterpart Day", the last day of training, our counterparts came to take us to our sites.

There was a section of the agenda where we were to discuss with them our different cultural perspectives on universal concepts, such as family, work, gender, love. The municipal council member accompanying my counterpart spoke first: "Work is sacred," he said. "Everyone has the right to work."

Just a week ago, all the municipal employees met with the new mayor. Unlike most new mayors, he has no plan to fire anyone in order to make space for family members. The key part of his speech was that he expected quality work from us, but if we did not work hard, our jobs would be at risk. "Your work is sacred," he said. "Protect it."

Today I went to call on a friend's mother so I could borrow a key. I felt rude because I was rushed and didn't have time to chat. "I understand," she said. "It's your work. My daughter, too. That's a good thing. Work is sacred."

It seems like I've heard that a lot lately, and it's got me thinking hard to make sense of it. I suppose work would be considered sacred in a culture where the amount of work you do, the area of land you cultivate, the products you sell at market, directly relate to the amount of food on the table at night.

Work means a healthy family. It means the ability to live easier. It's survival. It's sacred because it's not necessarily something that everyone has, regardless of their merit. A plague or drought or crippling illness can affect anyone's work indiscriminately. Work, in a sense, is God-given.

I've always thought of work from the perspective of the industrial-age "Protestant work ethic," though. People who are smarter and work harder get better jobs. Some jobs are better than others. (Quick test here: Janitor or lawyer? Which does mainstream US and even Guatemalan culture suppose is better?) Work is not sacred, because it is something man controls. It is earned by man, not God-given.

But more and more, I think I can see the Mayan point of view. The recent economic crises have served as a reminder that we live in a complicated economic system, one that we hardly control. The crises have shown lots of people that there is no shame in working simply to put food on the table.

Point being: Work is not something everyone has. We shouldn't take our work for granted, or complain about it, whatever it is. We have to protect it - do it as well and with as much pride as we can, while knowing it can be taken just as it was given.

If we don't revere our work, we've lost sight of its basic meaning.

One day I was chatting with some friends over lunch. We were talking about US culture, how we are often so rushed working that we eat lunch standing or at our desks. One friend commented, "You know, that's so funny. It's impossible to get people from the communities [small villages in my municipality] to even come to an event during lunchtime."

Another agreed. "It's because they haven't lost perspective," he said. "We work to eat, not the other way around."

Your work is sacred. Protect it.

Quick update to the "big changes" post: Last week we met at an All-Volunteer Conference, and if you'd like to know more, I would recommend a post from a fellow volunteer, EJR's "The most difficult decision". The summary is that post is reducing in size and scope to make security easier to handle. This is requiring some volunteers to make tough choices. Even so, post itself is not shutting down, despite the Guatemalan press's confusion on the matter.

I've made my choices (stay in community until late April regardless), and am moving on now to processing my own imminent departure from Peace Corps. Believe it or not I may be replaced at this point by a displaced volunteer, though, which has been a big relief.

It's still a scramble to finish up work, and I can't even believe how productive the days and weeks are now compared to a year ago. Life is filled with interpretive text, pulling strings and dropping names, annual operating plans, meetings, guide trainings ... And oh right, I have a Master's project to finish...!

So this post might be a little late at this point -- I was conceiving of it about a month ago as a response to a call for posts on a blog I'm mildly addicted to (That Wife). If you're not in a Christmas mood you can always bookmark it and come back in 11 months, though :-)

As background, I have a long-distance boyfriend/partner/marido/hombre/esposo/ch'mil whom I've not really mentioned on this blog. It's a confusing situation, but for the moment, it suffices to say that we spent Christmas Eve/Christmas Day with his family here in Guatemala and it was really great.

It was my first Christmas away from home, but it wasn't sad as I expected, just new. Here are some new traditions we got to try:

Christmas Eve Day, 9 am:

Woken up by the cat-scarf. This is a tradition we plan to replicate in the future.

10:30 am: We give the cat-scarf good-bye snuggles, and go off to begin the gluttony with a delicious brunch at a restaurant in a nearby city. Then we go in search of an elusive flower for boyfriend's mom's Christmas present. On the way, we walk through the market, which is an amazing and complete zoo.

1 pm: Lunch with boyfriend's family. Afterward we wash dishes, nap, and work on the computer, while I wrap a few presents.

4 pm: Family friends come to visit, and leave, and others come. The gluttony continues with tea, coffee, and rounds of spiced chocolate treats from Germany, plus US-style Christmas cookies we bought from a local bakery. At this point I've consumed in one day what in site I usually eat in three days.

7 pm: Mother-in-law and I go off to collect our Christmas tamales from her special supplier. It's freezing outside but I'm warmed by the boiling-hot tamales in my arms, and we admire the Christmas lights in the neighborhoods on our way home. Feels like Christmas.

The tamales come in two kinds: sweet with chocolate, and savory with raisins and red sweet pepper. Around 8 pm we eat dinner. Here are the tamales, or "paches" as they're called here:

11:00 pm: We light the Advent wreath and Christmas tree (German traditions), then sing some carols. Those Germans really know how to serenade their Christmas greenery. I mumble along and pretend to know the words. (I'm pro at this point with all that Mam practice.)

Safety first!:

After singing, we put all the presents on the table, one or two for each person. My boyfriend and I got basically two presents: a nice photo book of Guatemala from his family, and warm winter hats from my mom. (You know you're finally grown up when you get excited about...)

This was really different for me, but sort of liberating. At home everybody gets a LOT of presents, they go under the tree from Santa, and we open them on Christmas morning with stockings. At home we've "down-sized" since I was kid, but even last year seems quite extravagant comparatively.

I have a lot of dear childhood memories, but I admit I liked the one-present idea this year. It's fun to open something, but kind of seems totally besides the point. People in my site don't even really give Christmas presents, although kids might get some fruit or candy.

There is a bigger present coming, after all...

Waiting for baby Jesus to arrive (the fruit/moss/nativity under the tree is a Guate tradition).

Christmas morning, 12:00 am

The streets and skies erupt in pure pyrotechnic joy. For miles in every direction you can hear firework shells echoing in homage to baby Jesus, or perhaps simply in homage to the fact that Guatemalans just really love fireworks. After about five minutes the fireworks stop, and we give each other "the Christmas hug" (also a Guatemalan tradition). Then it's off to bed.

10 am

We roll out of bed, eat breakfast, and spend the morning relaxing. I'm content, but I do think of my mom's sticky buns!

12 pm:

Another round of fireworks. It's amazing how much Guatemalans love pyrotechnics.

1 pm:

We go out to eat for lunch, the big meal of the day. This was maybe the most different tradition for me-- I have never in my life gone out to eat on Christmas day, let alone for pizza! At home we usually eat a sandwich or cereal on our own for lunch on Christmas, then have appetizers and a big prepared dinner with the extended family in the evening.

3 pm:

Unlike at home in the US, Christmas is sort of winding down at this point, and we have another relaxed afternoon: we go for a walk, take a nap, and watch Andrea Bocelli's "My Christmas" video through dinner. (Not going to lie that I didn't love every second of it.)

7 pm:

Tamales, round two. We also eat a special German Christmas bread called stollen. (16% butter. yee-haw!)

My brother-in-law's baby Guatemalan fir made its debut this year. Public service announcement: The Guatemalan fir is an endangered species endemic to the Western Highlands, endangered precisely for its excellent Christmas-tree qualities, and its unfortunate propensity to drop seed only once every two years. (And in December, right around the time people would tend to cut them down - tough love, evolution, tough love.)

8 pm:

We watched an animated Christmas movie, then headed off to bed early.

I really enjoyed Christmas this year, and not to sound corny, but I experienced first hand that it really is being with family and being part of their traditions that makes Christmas great, whether they're your traditions or not ! Less is where you are, what you eat, or what you receive...

Hi all-

Just wanted to drop a line about the situation here. None of what I'm about to say is secret - the news is in a PDF published today by Peace Corps on their website [link here].

On Tuesday we were called in and told that our training group would be closing our service (COSing) early - like, "you have at most three more weeks to finish your work" early. Everybody's situation is different; some were satisfied with their work and thinking of COSing early anyway. For others this was quite the bombshell, on top of having been told just a month earlier we would not be replaced. We know that our work is not in a "sustainable" place right now. We know that three weeks will go by in a heartbeat.

I was still considering my options the day after when we received an e-mail that our early COS is actually part of a bigger plan of reduction and consolidation that will affect many more volunteers here in Guatemala.

I have many general thoughts on the situation, but I will save them for a more appropriate moment. At this point in time, I just wanted to share my personal experience as a volunteer almost 22 months into her service.

So here it is: I'm unprepared to leave, folks. What makes me most sad is the idea of saying goodbye early - but saying goodbye I could do. What will actually prevent me from leaving early are my pending work commitments.

Like many, I am one of those volunteers who get chugging late, but at the end are enjoying a lot of momentum. It might not be ideal, but it's the way things work sometimes when you are the first generation volunteer, live in a fairly closed community, have an uncommitted counterpart, and/or have no funding. For volunteers like us, the last three months are worth six.

My counterparts and I have an interpretative trail to finish, signs to hang, two months of water data to collect (plus fieldwork), a park logo to finalize, a group of young people to organize, a first round of promotion to do, a proposal to write for park infrastructure improvements, an annual operating plan to help shape, a plan to present to the new mayor. The majority of that will happen before our new COS date, but not all of it can (especially my Masters' work).

I feel confident that things will work out, in one way or another. We will find out more soon. But for the meantime, I'm just trying to process what all this will mean for us.

Sometimes this is what life seems to think of making plans. (Splattered blackberry juice on painstakingly crafted to-do list. April 2010)

Aside from my post on Christmas this week, I somehow went an entire month without posting, although that wasn't the intention. In quick review, it was a busy but fun month:

(1) I resigned to twiddling my thumbs somewhat during December, with a feria patronal and municipal holiday the entire second week, and 3/4ths of my relevant counterparts on vacation all month;

(2) I dedicated most of my mental energy to finishing out the guide class I started in September (we had classes on plant identification, security/first aid, how to give a good tour, and a field trip to a nearby archeological park);

(3) the entire week before Christmas myself and all the other municipal employees put off anything else that might have been important and scrambled to pull together the inauguration of the mayor's enormous pet project, and

(4) my boyfriend came to visit for two awesome weeks over Christmas and New Year's. Truth be told, we didn´t have to survive the holidays... they were great. What merited some difficulty was processing the news we´ve just received...

The news: On Dec. 16th we were informed by Peace Corps that my group will not be replaced. The same decision was made for El Salvador, and Honduras volunteers will actually be evacuated while PC/Washington evaluates operations there. I may write more about this later, but the bottom line is that the decision was, as far as we know, not precipitated by any specific events in Guatemala that might threaten volunteers. From my perspective there's no reason for folks at home to be more concerned than usual about us here in Guate, as it's more a precautionary measure related to the regional security situation.

I kept to myself about it over Christmas, but I started sharing the news with my counterparts last week, and they are actually pretty disappointed. It brings home what a bummer this really is, and I've started to get a little more anxious about doing them justice and leaving some sort of sustainable momentum. One step at a time is all, though.

On the positive side I've decided to take on two personal projects to help channel that energy: one is the Couch 2 5K program, so that I come back to the States in good shape and ready for summer adventures; the other is post on the blog a lot more frequently, perhaps even every other day or so.

We'll see what these last three months bring! (Wow. Last three months. Thinking that out loud makes me feel like an Edvard Munch painting.)

This year was my first Christmas away from home and family. It was definitely different, but fun to be in a place that celebrates Christmas with its own mix of traditions. Although my religious perspective is very open, being away from home this year I realized how important the holiday is to me.

The venerable 4th street, Zone 3 Christmas tree, made of green crepe paper over a metal frame, complete with lights and music box which plays MIDI Christmas carols only two octaves below the audible limits of human hearing. It's enough to make me want to break out in a rousing edition of "O, Tannenbaum"

Something interesting about Christmas here is the mixture of traditional and new. Due to the influence of returned immigrants – and to some extent blatant commercialization in a nearby city – some secular Christmas ideas from the US are making their way more into celebrations in my town (though always with a Guatemalan spin). Hello public Christmas trees, lights, and Santa.According to Wal-mart in the closest city the Christmas season started a few days before Halloween, which was kind of strange. Here in my town it started at the beginning of December (as it properly should, haha), with a care package from my mom. That same night my street´s "Christmas tree committee" had its annual Christmas tree lighting and marching band contest. After that, Christmas decorations and the dreaded music boxes of MIDI-Christmas-carol doom started going up all over the place.

Annual Christmas tree lighting: one night I found the Macy's Day Parade outside my front door.

It was a noisy and cheerful month, if a little frustrating work-wise, since almost all my counterparts were on vacation physically and mentally. Even so it was a very happy time: I had my boyfriend´s visit to look forward to; we enjoyed dry, sunny weather; and I came home every night to find my street filled with ¨Christmas cheer¨: lights, excited children, and neighborhood stands brimming with fireworks and Christmas treats. We’re at around 8000 ft here, so it was almost freezing cold at night, which made it feel very Christmas-like as well, even without snow.In mid-December the posadas started taking to the streets every night, commemorating Mary and Joseph´s search for shelter with candle-light processions and cheerful and off-key carol-singing. Mom's care-package: Being away from home, I embraced the kitsch this year with enthusiasm I probably haven't had since I was about 12. Thanks, Mom!

I eventually even adapted to the incessant noise of fire-crackers and the music box on the street outside my house playing ¨Jingle Bells¨ on repeat for three hours every night. (Though I still can´t relate to the Guatemalan super-power of noise tolerance.)

The afternoon before Christmas break the municipality gave each employee a Christmas basket filled with basic staples and lots of typical Christmas treats like marshmallows, canned peaches, imported grapes, and Washington apples. From what I´ve heard this is pretty standard practice throughout Guatemala.

(Getting apples in the Christmas basket made me think of Little House on the Prairie— as an 8-year-old reading how Laura Ingalls got all excited about an orange in her stocking, I could only contemplate with horror the idea that a piece of fruit could possibly be a Christmas present. Now I get it a little bit more.)

While it's a fun time of year to eat marshmellows and burn firecrackers, there's also nativity scenes and lots of talk in the air about "el niño Jesus." Religious Catholics in my town go to church on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, while Evangelicals seem to play down the situation unless Christmas falls on their normal day of worship. In rural areas especially, but throughout the country, people prepare traditional paches or special sweet tamales, which they often eat at midnight, and many drink a spiked fruit drink called ponche.

Midnight on Christmas Eve is typically the main show. Those with money to blow go nuts with the fire-crackers and fireworks, lit off at precisely midnight (with a reprise at noon on Christmas Day). In my town at least, families typically don´t have the custom of giving presents - fireworks are cooler I guess -, but everyone exchanges the traditional ¨Christmas hug¨ between family and close friends. It's a nice idea, and I wonder how and when it got started.Christmas tamale!

That's about all I've got on the general celebration here in Guate. I didn’t spend actual Christmas day in town, but with my boyfriend´s family in a nearby city – so I´ll share more on that later!

This year was my first Christmas away from home and family. It was definitely different, but fun to be in a place that celebrates Christmas with its own mix of traditions. Although my religious perspective is very open, being away from home this year I realized how important the holiday is to me.

The venerable 4th street, Zone 3 Christmas tree, made of green crepe paper over a metal frame, complete with lights and music box which plays MIDI Christmas carols only two octaves below the audible limits of human hearing. It's enough to make me want to break out in a rousing edition of "O, Tannenbaum"

Something interesting about Christmas here is the mixture of traditional and new. Due to the influence of returned immigrants – and blatant commercialization – lots of secular Christmas ideas from the US are making their way into celebrations in my town. Hello public Christmas trees, lights, and Santa.At Wal-mart in the closest city the Christmas season started right after Halloween, which was kind of strange. Here in my town it started at the beginning of December (as it properly should, haha), with a care package from my mom. That same night my street´s "neighborhood association" had its annual Christmas tree lighting and marching band contest. After that, Christmas decorations and the dreaded music boxes of MIDI-Christmas-carol doom started going up all over the place.

Annual Christmas tree lighting: one night I found the Macy's Day Parade outside my front door.

It was a noisy and cheerful month, if a little frustrating work-wise, since almost all my counterparts were on vacation physically and mentally. Even so it was a happy time: I had my boyfriend´s visit to look forward to; we enjoyed dry, sunny weather; and I came home every night to find my street filled with ¨Christmas cheer¨: lights, excited children, and neighborhood stands brimming with fireworks and Christmas treats. We’re at around 8000 ft here, so it was almost freezing cold at night, which made it feel very Christmas-like as well, even without snow.In mid-December the posadas started taking to the streets every night, commemorating Mary and Joseph´s search for shelter with candle-light processions and cheerful and off-key carol-singing. Mom's care-package: Being away from home, I embraced the kitsch this year with enthusiasm I probably haven't had since I was about 12. Thanks, Mom!

I eventually even adapted to the incessant noise of fire-crackers and the music box on the street outside my house playing ¨Jingle Bells¨ on repeat for three hours every night. (Though I still can´t relate to the Guatemalan super-power of noise tolerance.)

The afternoon before Christmas break the municipality gave each employee a Christmas basket filled with basic staples and lots of typical Christmas treats like marshmallows, canned peaches, imported grapes, and Washington apples. I think this is pretty standard practice throughout Guatemala.

(Getting apples in the Christmas basket made me think of Little House on the Prairie— as an 8-year-old reading how Laura Ingalls got all excited about an orange in her stocking, I could only contemplate with horror the idea that a piece of fruit could possibly be a Christmas present. Now I get it a little bit more.)

While it's a fun time of year to eat marshmellows and burn firecrackers, there's also nativity scenes and lots of talk in the air about "el niño Jesus." Religious Catholics go to church on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, while evangelicals typically play down the situation unless Christmas falls on their normal day of worship. In rural areas, people prepare traditional paches or special sweet tamales, which they often eat at midnight, and many drink a spiked fruit drink called ponche.

Midnight on Christmas Eve is typically the main show. Those with money to blow go nuts with the fire-crackers and fireworks (with a reprise at noon on Christmas Day). In my town at least, families typically don´t have the custom of giving presents - fireworks are cooler I guess -, but everyone exchanges the traditional ¨Christmas hug¨ between family and close friends. It's a nice idea, and I wonder how and when it got started.Christmas tamale!

That's about all I've got on the general celebration here in Guate. I didn’t spend actual Christmas day in town, but with my boyfriend´s family in a nearby city – so I´ll share more on that later!

I can hardly believe a year's passed since I last wrote about what to pack. In less than a month we'll welcome a new group of trainees to Guatemala - including, probably, my replacement. Wow! It's exciting and bittersweet. It'll be great to pass along the reins to someone with fresh energy and enthusiasm, but also sad and difficult to close out projects and say goodbye.

Pretty much the all-time most popular blog post I ever wrote was about what to pack for Peace Corps in Guatemala (click here to open). That's gotta be for a reason. In that vein I thought I would link back to that original post, which offers a comprehensive list, and also offer a few quick tips:

(1) Bring your laptop! For security reasons and perhaps wanting to go minimalist, I think many invitees question whether they should bring one. If you're asking yourself, you should. You won't need it urgently (I went my first six months without!), as Internet cafes abound, but it is so useful for work, communication, and entertainment. You can cut down your risks substantially by keeping your house secure and simply not traveling with it.

(2) Less is more. You really do not need to bring too much stuff, clothing or otherwise. There are really well-stocked used clothing stores (paca/ropa americana) all over here that catering to a surprising array of sizes, and stores/supermarkets sell almost anything you could find in the US. It will be easy to find almost everything you need here, and you can get care packages with hard-to-find items; just bring stuff to get you through the first months, including 2-3 semi-formal outfits to wear to the Peace Corps office and a nicer outfit for swearing-in. But one bag or two, you'll figure out how to get your stuff out to site, so don't worry too much.

(3) Enjoy the ritual. Entering Peace Corps is a very exciting and stressful time. I think packing gets a lot of our attention because it's a very physical part of the transition. Don't stress out about packing - you're not going to the moon for two years - but think about the clothing and items you'd like to have along for the first part of your experience. Maybe bring an album of photos from home to show your host families (you'll have a minimum of three), and little gifts special to your hometown for them. Above all, remember that just as you will be changed by your experience, very little of what you pack now may make it back into your bags as you prepare to come home in 27 months!

(SimplyRecipes.com)

There’s this amazing bakery run by Mennonites* in the closest major city to me. Throughout the year they offer a dizzying array of donuts, breads, cookies, dairy products, condiments, and other assorted baked sweets. And they sell honey in empty, repurposed Jack Daniels and rum bottles. How could one not be all for it? (Yes, I’m talking to you, A!) Every Thanksgiving they take pre-orders for pumpkin pie. I, being a good US citizen, did my part by pre-ordering three pies. I was thinking to present two for snack at a meeting we were to have on Wednesday before I left for Thanksgiving break… and leaving the other for… general household consumption. There’s just something about being able to have a little taste and sight and smell of home, even if you're far from family. And I was missing an important meeting on Friday because of Thanksgiving vacation, so in my head the pie was a way to make up for lost points with my colleagues. Oh the accolades and acceptance that pie would bring on the wave of each delighted bite… The only problem was that they open solely on Tuesday and Friday, from 9 am – 6 pm, which is always a bit shy of fitting into my work schedule, unless I happen to be going into the city for the weekend. And while I tried to beg and plead, I had to get the pies on their timetable. I had already pumped up this pie to my colleagues who would be at the Wednesday meeting, and I’m a bit of an anguished people pleaser sometimes. I had to deliver. I just had to.

(As with any time of unusual stress, you occasionally fixate on weird and insignificant things during Peace Corps- this was certainly one of my better moments.) The situation was: meeting on Wednesday morning; pie pick-up on Tuesday or Friday. It had to be Tuesday. Only problem, I was already double-booked on Tuesday. I had a workshop all morning and a meeting all afternoon. Maybe I could slip away at lunch. Or, worst case, head out a little early and bust down to the city before 6. As to be expected, everything on Tuesday ran a good hour and a half behind schedule. By the time I got away from my afternoon meeting it was questionable whether I could make it or not. I wanted those pies, though, so I crossed my hopeful fingers and hopped on a bus. The bus driver I chose must have been ahead of schedule or taking sedatives, because he moseyed down the highway at a cozy 30 miles an hour for six miles, slowing down and personally inviting every single pedestrian on the side of the road to board. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a Guatemalan mini-bus, but their drivers are generally not renowned for their moderate pace or adherence to traffic laws. I took this as a sign that the universe perhaps did not want me to have those pies. Or wanted me to get a lesson in patience. Patience was not really what I felt, though, as we crawled down the highway at two-thirds the normal mini-bus speed. When we finally got into the city, a quick glance at my watch revealed that there was still a good chance that I might get the pies. Hopeful, I sprinted off the bus seven blocks from the bakery, and ran. Yes, ran, full-out sprint, down the city blocks, spreading confused looks in my wake. In Guatemala the pace is not really conducive to rushing for much of anything, except perhaps a good seat on the mini-bus. And in that case, rushing has more to do with butt size and elbow sharpness than anything else. Despite a fair-sized and growing group of Guatemalan athletes who embrace the sport, running farther than half a block outside of a soccer field is generally something one does to escape personal danger.

I hadn’t run that hard in months, and I liked it. I had been forced to tolerate the mini-bus, and now I was in control: queen of my own pace, captain of my own team, destiny itself. Every stride was pounding out my frustrations at the day, the relaxed bus driver, those pies that might not wait for me.

I breezed past traffic lights, shopping malls and early-evening shoppers, commuters on foot and in their cars, high school couples hidden away in poorly lit corners, almost certain of my victory now.6:03 pm.

That was when I arrived to find the store closed. Lights off, everything quiet as a mouse. At first I couldn’t believe I had gotten there on time. Or, what should have been on time. It seems unfair that in a country with such a relaxed culture of time, something as informal as picking up a pie should be regulated to the minute. How punctual they were in closing! I briefly contemplated throwing myself to the ground and screaming in the style of Marlon Brando, A Street-Car Named Desire, but there wasn’t any audience, and it was getting late, and there wasn’t much to do about it. I jogged back to my bus stop, and made it back to site in record time, with a bus driver who was not put off by such minor details as the highway being full of non-moving cars in rush-hour gridlock. He'd just make his own right hand lane – weaving in and out of dirt parking lots and over minor ditches - when he felt traffic was too congested. The drivers are always most insane when you’re not in a rush.

In the end, of course, it wasn't such a tragedy.

My colleagues hardly noticed the snack change. (I might still be a few points short for missing the meeting, though.) The pies were bought by others, or maybe fed to hungry suntanned Mennonite children.

I saved a few Q. and a few calories. And on Thanksgiving day, I had a delicious slice of apple pie (my total favorite) at dinner. Truth be told I never have even liked pumpkin pie at home in the US.

Why I Love Peace Corps, #2:

My Local Park Guards

The park guards are the sincerest guys I know here. It took me awhile to feel acknowledged by them, but after awhile I've come to realize that they have a real appreciation for me being here, and a similar viewpoint about the work we're all doing.

I recently got this formal request from them, which reflected for me a bit of the confidence I feel so honored to have received from them. And which also gives a taste of formal Guatemalan language... it seems ridiculously formal translated nearly literally into English! I would guess it's a remnant of post-colonialism...

[my name here]

Peace Corps Volunteer

Municipality of [my site here]

Present

By means of the present receive the warmest greetings on the part of the park guards of [my site here], at the same time we wish to desire you every type of success in your daily labor.

WE THE BELOW SIGNED all majority of age, Guatemalans, holding the title of Municipal Park Guards of the municipality of [my site here] of the department of [my department here], BEFORE YOU RESPECTFULLY direct ourselves in order to expound the following: FIRST: That it is of your knowledge that our work is practiced in the communal forest of the municipality in order to maintain and watch over the forests of our municipality, for which it is necessary to carry mountain backpacks in order to carry medicines for first aid and others. SECOND: For the reasons written above, and with all the respect that you deserve as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the municipality of [my site, department], at the same time we solicit to your good person and willingness that you would help us by donating three mountain backpacks.

Without more to add for you, we thank your fine attention and understanding.

Attentively,

[names and signatures of 3 park guards]

For the curious, I tend to gently distract these outright requests for things, since granting them can lead to a vicious cycle of paternalism and weakening local systems (i.e. Ideally, my counterpart should really just push with the mayor to make sure his guys are equipped, yet these 3 don't trust either of them... And since they don't rely on my counterpart/mayor, my counterpart/the mayor become less reliable for them, and so on. Or, they could probably save up and buy the backpacks if they really wanted, but they asked for them to be donated. I don't like that it's reinforcing the culture of asking for things from people without really having earning them.)

But these guys are friends, my counterpart is okay with it, and it really touched me that they confide in me to the extent that they went to the trouble of typing a formal request.

I'm in the process of researching if there aren't any suitable backpacks available for purchase in the region (I hear there is a great local company called Antarctic), and if not, hoping that some friends in the US will help me out! At any rate I will probably ask for some contribution from the guys.

Thanksgiving isn't a Guatemalan holiday, but it's one of a handful of holidays that Peace Corps gives us off - to find a delicious traditional feast or make one; making one meaning pay some exorbitant cost at Wal-Mart for fresh cranberries, and track down a good pumpkin pie or two. Oh, the lengths one goes to when subconsciously homesick.

This year my visiting cousins and I opted for the first route, at a little gem of a hippie avocado farm outside of Antigua, appropriately named EarthLodge.

I try to subscribe to the school of thought that we ought to give thanks every day. Even so, it's good to say our thanks out loud now and then, I think. There are so many things I'm thankful for, but say I had to pick five, and stick to them;

(1) To get things rolling, I'm thankful for what in English we can only describe as nature. All our oxygen.. drinking water.. fertile soils.. Where would we be without you, tree?

(2) Thankful for them:

(3) Thankful for this little guy and every flea on his head:

(4) Thankful for cell phones, which let me talk to them:

(5) And above all, so thankful for him! This is my other form of oxygen.

Has living in Guatemala for two years made me appreciate more what I have? I think for the most part, although not necessarily for the reasons you might expect. Four distinct seasons, hot water for washing dishes, a washing machine for clothes and evil heavy blankets, (more) predictable structure in my work and daily life, waking up next to the love of my life every morning. These are things I relish now in their absence.

So while it's been extraordinarily frustrating at times, I have to admit that in the end, I have to be grateful for the good and the bad. They come together. A package deal. And maybe that's a sixth thing to be thankful for.

Last year I spent the night of October 31 sitting at the window of my rented room on the outskirts of town, watching as orange pinpricks of candlelight multiplied in the far-off darkness of the municipal cemetery. Curious. I painted a face onto a squash, wondering with muted hope what significance those pinpricks might have for us. Self-congratulatory as I was at the preparations I'd made for that little squash, I felt an acute emptiness where Halloween should have been. And by Halloween, I mean, my friends and family.

The next day I headed off to a nearby city with my mother-in-law, to pay respects at her husband's tomb. That was when I understood more clearly what Dia de los Santos really is about. Not everyone strictly believes that their loved ones' spirits return to the earth around midnight on November 1. Even so, in the majority of Guatemalan towns relatives still visit their loved ones' tombs, decorating with flowers and wreaths, leaving candles and trinkets. Some hire bands to serenade their loved ones' tombs. Others bring offerings of alcohol and food, while plentiful street vendors dedicate themselves to feeding the living. It's pretty much a carnival in the cemetery.

In the weeks before the celebration, the rain more or less stops, and children go out in full force every afternoon to lift their kites on the fall winds, inviting the spirits of their ancestors to return to earth for a brief and sacred window of time.

In my town almost everyone spends the night of October 31 at the side of their relatives' tombs, staying until 7 or 8 am on the 1st. By mid-day November 1 the place is deserted.

Last year I didn't go. My host family is Adventist, and they don't believe in spirits. You bury your loved ones, you miss them awhile, and that's it. The leftover bones aren't important. The important part was the reconciling your loved ones did while alive. And no quantity of cut flowers on a tomb will do anything for anyone's soul at that point. Or so they say.

(Oddly enough, Adventist children still fly kites. I guess it's not completely lost on them that some rituals are secretly just for the living.)

This year I did go to our local cemetery in the night - invited by a good friend, whose father insists grandpa and grandma be serenaded yearly with the traditional Mayan music they so loved. At 3 am I pulled myself out of bed, and by the time we got to her great-grandparents' tomb, the trio of hired musicians had already been playing 3 hours, a little bonfire keeping them warm in our tucked-away corner of the cemetery.

Words cannot describe the eternal feeling of those moments, the music and smoke and candlelight weaving us all into some enormous tapestry whose existence I've never doubted, even when I could not touch or feel or see it. Although that night, let me tell you, it was palpable.

At 7 am, on the heels of daybreak, they served hot tamales and tea to everyone assembled, and later on I traveled to that same nearby city, to help arrange flowers once again on my father-in-law's grave, and to revel in the massive crowds gathered in observance of a common denominator.

I'm not sure why, but I adore Dia de los Santos. Maybe it's because it serves as a reminder, of which I feel in need sometimes. We're alone in death, it's true. But despite that cruel fact, we needn't be alone beforehand.

Wow, I cannot believe it's been more than a month since I got home from NY. Since then I've weathered a week straight of rain, neared completion on the first phase of our sign project, pushed along the guide training class, sat in on way too many meetings, celebrated Dia de los Santos, had to find a replacement for my netbook that died, baked some killer pizza in my oven, and hosted a 5-day photography camp for 16 adolescents. Times have been busy.

Since my computer crapped out the blog topics had been piling up without release, both in my brain and on the computer. Now that the power's flowing through my motherboard and we survived photo camp, I'm planning to send out a few posts in a row to make up for the radio silence of the past months.

One series I've been contemplating is "Why I Love Peace Corps." Some posts will be sincere, others a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I'll let you all judge. Without further adieu:

Why I Love Peace Corps*, #1:

You can use children as free labor to decorate your house.

In a matter of an hour and a half tonight I had an entire wall covered in charming drawings, and all I had to do was give them scrap paper and put up with a little bit of screaming. Felices as we say here. For that matter, you can ask these kids to sweep your house, mop the floors, wash the windows, fold your clothes, and do the dishes and they will do it. Some will even think it's fun before a more lazy/rowdy kid in the bunch points out that, hey, if we were doing this in our own houses right now it would probably be considered work. But I try to draw a line somewhere.

*I should specify off-the-bat that some of these reasons will be more specific to "why I love living in a small Mayan town in the highlands of Guatemala for two years", however Peace Corps is one of few opportunities that ever would have allowed me to do that, and certainly was the most accessible opportunity.

For the last week we lived what I think most would characterize as a generally depressing weather situation: an unrelenting oscillation between pouring rain, drizzling rain, and clouds threatening to rain.

I should say straight off, rain is a blessing. There’s nothing nicer than lying back in your bed at night, falling asleep to the rain on your roof, rejoicing with the thirsty corn, the thirsty forest, the thirsty people. The point of this post is not to rag on the rain, as I am sure there have many heartfelt prayers of thanks to the rain during mankind's time on this planet.

Even so, after a week of waking up to rain, you notice that it feels like you’re on an extendedly crappy camping trip in the Adirondack mountains of upstate NY during a wet spell. When you live in an almost windowless cement box, you become permeated with cold, moldy damp. A leak burns out the light in your kitchen, which won’t be fixed until the puddle on your roof can dry out. Neither countertops nor floors seem worth cleaning. Showering is an unappealing task in an environment, which, both inside and outside, maintains itself at a breezy 55 degrees. Baskets are molding, your clothes are molding, you yourself seem to be molding.

With a regrettably non-functional laptop and your whiny cat as sole companion, you can only bundle up, accept a dip in productivity, and hold onto the knowledge that someday the sun will come out. Read a book, make some hot chocolate, and get over that week's doomed to-do list.

Growing up in a thoroughly climate-controlled environment, with TV to distract me from whatever change in weather might come my way, I didn’t really understand until now the literal meaning behind Annie’s famous song - nor the importance of holding on to that mantra of optimism.

I get it now, because the sun came out yesterday. It’s still out now. For no reason, other than that, I feel sublimely happy. I know I'm not the only one, because most of my colleagues posted Facebook status updates about it within two hours of the first rays of sunlight. (You truly can't imagine that collective sigh of relief. It was palpable.)

After a week living under the pouring rain, I don't need a PhD in physiology to say that we are hard-wired to need sunshine. Nor do I need formal study in anthropology to understand why a culture would place the sun at the head of their panthenon.

The sun really is everything for us. Not just the basis of almost every food chain on the planet, and very nearly everything we eat, nor just the driving force of our environment. It's the basis of our daily rhythms as well. I can say it now, but I can only understand it because I lived it then. The sun sustains not only our physical being, but our spiritual as well. It's no small coincidence.

Tomorrow I embark for my second and probably last vacation home during Peace Corps. Hard to believe I have only six months left, but things are chugging along nicely. Have some friends, have some projects, have some Masters' data. And it seems like the increase in amount of stuff I've been asked to bring back from this trip is a quite a good proxy for my degree of integration into the community.

So that everyone can see just how integrated I am (re: just how comfortable people are taking advantage of my near-inability to say no), a non-abbreviated list of things people have asked me to bring them from the US:

-Two nice digital cameras

-Six old digital cameras (Actually, I'm pushing this one too, it's for a photography camp we'll be doing in November!)

-Half a dozen Victoria's Secret bras

-A special camera case**

-A netbook**

-A special perfume, neither the name nor brand of which the person could name, but supposedly they'll bring me the empty bottle tomorrow morning before I leave**

-A small boom microphone for videocamera

-A sound system (this was clearly shot down, I don't think Delta's going to let me pack that as checked baggage, and it's not like Maryland or wherever the system is stored would be just half an hour away!)

**These items were, not too unpredictably, asked for today. Am I the only one who thinks that requesting a 3,000 Q. computer is not a casual transaction to slip in between "When do you get back?" and "How's the weather there this time of year?" ?

Last trip's request for an English-Spanish digital translator was clearly mere child's play. At the risk of making everyone think it's effortless to find anything anywhere in the US on short notice, I'll do my best to help them out. Next week I'll be on hiatus to celebrate my good friend's wedding and hold my grandma's hand while watching Jeopardy, but when I get back I'll let everyone know how it went!

My experience has matured somewhat since I last wrote about Independence Day celebrations here in Guatemala, but the outward festivities were basically the same this year: gymnastics contests, pre-schoolers in pageant evening gowns, plastic flags, talk of the "patria", young men left to make what they can out of their drums and trumpets. After a year here, the band practice seemed a lot less noisy, I have to admit, and the national and municipal elections certainly stole a lot of attention from the crepe-paper quetzal-bird and ceiba-tree confection. Yet all in all, I can't say the celebration was much different from last year.

What got me thinking this year was a talk I attended at a Spanish school in a nearby city on the morning of September 15, where a university professor spoke on the basic history of Guatemalan independence from Spain, and the subsequent dynamic between the Guatemalan-born full-blooded Spaniards (criollos) who primarily led the revolution, and the rest of the primarily Mayan and Ladino (of mixed heritage) population.

At the end he left open the question: "Are we, the majority of Guatemalans, really independent? From what, and to whose purpose?" It's an important, complex question- one that few seem to ask out loud, for a variety of reasons.

Later on, I went to the parade. To someone with my background, big parades with inflatable advertisements from large corporations, street vendors peddling tiny flags, and polished high school marching bands with chubby, unhappy sousaphone players, signal business as usual. What could be wrong in a country where the speakers blare pop music and advertising jingos from the back of slow-moving pick-up trucks, beautiful scantily-clad models pass out flyers advertising the latest deals from big box stores, sons sit on their fathers' shoulders, and mothers buy their children corn-on-the-cob?

That's to say, it would have been easy to forget the professor's final thoughts. But there was a moment, when I looked out over the marching young Ladino and Mayan men, proudly high-stepping in colonial Spanish uniforms, celebrating their independence from that very state, and I wondered: Just whose independence are we celebrating? And just who has an interest that these questions don't get asked?

I wrote this post about two months ago, at the beginning of the reforestation season. Today I went with fifth and sixth-graders from the local girls’ school to help out the park guards with the first tree planting of the year. It was a great day, starting with a 5 km walk and about 1000 ft of elevation gain, and ending with the same trek in reverse. (Man, exercise is so awesome. I can’t tell you. What a great way to start the weekend.) On the way down I stayed back to chat with the two sixth-grade teachers, both funny, creative, open-minded guys with whom I’ll be collaborating on a SPA project this year. About 2/3 of the way down, we ran into a little boy, maybe about 6 or 7 years old. The knees of his pants were torn out and dangling in flaps over his shins, his left rubber boot was splitting in two down to the ankle, he carried a heavy load of firewood on his forehead strap, his face and clothing grubby. Most significantly, he was laboring hard, completely alone, at hour when kids are legally mandated to be in school. After awhile in a different place, you can get used to things. I see grubby kids, drunks passed out on the curb, homeless women. Misfortune happens here; it happens in the US, too. But this kid made an impression - maybe because his clothing bore the outward signs of poverty that people here try so hard to avoid; maybe because he was all alone; maybe because he accepted one of the teachers’ help, and the load was heavy enough that the teacher himself was straining to carry it. After we parted ways with the kid, the teacher asked me, “What do you think of children’s rights in Guatemala? Should child protection come and cart that kid’s father off to jail for sending his kid to work when he should be in school?” It was easy for me to judge that situation – to be angry at his father for being irresponsible, or pardon him automatically, assume that they are so poor that he had no choice, wax romantic about cycles of poverty. But I recognize that the situation warrants a more complex analysis. On the one hand, I could say his parents were exposing him to risk sending him out alone, and put him at a disadvantage by depriving him of a basic formal education. Yet at the same time that kid will probably grow up with a work ethic to potentially rival that of most Harvard graduates; he’ll probably grow up, like most kids in my town, knowing more about practical tasks and working with his hands than I ever will, than most children in the US will. He'll probably know an unselfish responsability to his house, his family, his parents, that most kids in the US can't fathom. He'll grow up using and consuming a majority of resources that come from his own backyard.

Now, that said I can’t pretend to know his specific situation. Ultimately only his community and family can really judge the quality of his life. But his case reminds me something crucial that we’ve forgotten – or perhaps never realized – that “development” is not a simple linear process. It’s not just trading in sorrow and suffering for happiness, work and pain for school and advancement, ripped sweat pants for new ones. It’s a circular process, and as such, the gaining of one thing can mean the loss of another. With that I invite us all to think about what our “modern” society has given us; what it has lost us as a species, and how we might go about trying to strengthen what we’ve gained and still have, and recuperate what we’ve lost.

Happiness is a shared toothbrush holder.

Last month I had the great luck to host three travelers from a group called “Proyecto Chakana” – two Argentinians and a Spanish gal who are slowing working their way down from Mexico to Argentina, documenting issues of social and environmental justice along the route in photo, blog, radio, and video.

For those who don't know, the chakana is the "Incan Cross" - which is an iteration of the 4 cardinal points - which were and are a central spiritual symbol for many indigenous groups throughout the Americas. With their journey they hope to explore these cultural similarities, document shared threats to ecological and cultural preservation, and especially give voice to popular movements that have had the courage to organize themselves in hope of a better future.Something I really admire about the Proyecto Chakana folks is their openness to see where the journey takes them; to extend themselves, to look into little corners and not just run on by briskly checking off guide book highlights. (If it’s any indication, they stayed in Mexico for a year and a half!) What you learn as a PCV is that there’s a lot to be learned at the edges – in the places where you wouldn’t have thought or known to look wplanning on the couch at home. Taking care of a house solo and working 50 hours a week can get old, so it was awesome to have such conscientious visitors around. They cooked, cleaned, and brought an excellent music library, great conversation, and quite a few movies. Aside from nightly dinners, they kept me plenty occupied: hiking, bathing in temascal, playing cards, chatting, drinking pitchers of dark beer, getting to know folks in my town. I’m glad to have my bottom floor back, but I’ll never forget their time here. Spanish speakers can check out their videos and keep in touch with their journey here: http://www.proyectochakana.org/. (And also do check out the websites of two neat couples we met who are on similar Mexico – South America missions: “Permacyclists” -a Belgian/US combo with the goal of documenting environmental solutions - and “Viajero Sustentable” an Argentinian/Mexican pair with the goal of making a directory of sustainable tourism sites. Cool folks!)

What happens when Guatemalans get together to celebrate their patron saints? Fireworks lit off within 10 meters of their 450-year-old church, that's what happens. (As an aside, when the first shell went off, I nearly hit the ground, certain that some sort of gang warfare had just broken out. The man next to me commented, "Don't worry! It's just fireworks." I might have pointed out that in New York, we rarely light fireworks 30 feet away from a crowd of 400 people. But no need to get into all the complexities of cultural differences in risk perception, or we'll be here all night.)

Last year, the whole feria thing struck me as really raw, foreign, grungy. The streets were filled with carnival games, marimba bands, "costume dances" where grown men cross-dress and gyrate their hips while dressed as Xena Princess Warrior. Impromptu cantinas covered in Gallo beer advertisements, food stands selling lots of exotic stuff that screamed trouble for the digestive tract, strange drunk men, carnival rides ready to break apart in mid-air and throw their riders to certain death. In case you don't get the idea, space is rented to the vendors in units of 1 square meter. A Guatemalan Feria is a US county fair or street festival on steroids.

This year it struck me differently. I think part of it is that this was my first feria living in the center of town, away from my Evangelical host family. My first Feria since I've made good friends here. My first Feria where I had someone to drink a beer with, watch fireworks with, eat papusas with at night. My first Feria where there were people I was excited to run into on the street and pass time with. My first Feria where it felt like my town, and not just someplace I was living. My first Feria where rather than being surrounded by the unknown, I was at home.

One of the gals?

One of the guys?

Or might I not be something else entirely? I sometimes forget that I am a light-skinned, grotesquely tall alien. Then someone takes my picture in a group with local people and I’m reminded why small children usually either react to me with fascination or abject fright. Yet beyond that, I put up these two pictures to illustrate an issue of identity that has been central to my experience here – gender. I grew up in a small town in upstate New York wanting to think that my gender didn’t matter, that being female didn’t make me significantly different from any of my male peers. I distinctly remember the first week of third grade, when my teacher asked for some strong boys to help her hand out the math textbooks. The comment struck a strong chord – placed by whom and when, who knows – but I put my hand up and volunteered; and later that year I went on to beat all but two of the boys in my class in arm wrestling. I still remember so clearly those early affirmations that gender in itself is not a limitation.

So I guess it was odd for me to experience, coming here, that local attitudes surrounding my gender really did limit me, much more so than in the US. Having always wanted to be “gender-blind”, I didn’t really perceive it a lot at first. Yet over time I became more aware of the general inflexibility of gender roles - and accompanying attitudes - in my town. I also became more aware of my place as pant-wearing female, smack dab in the middle of the two constructed worlds, seemingly receiving the worst of both of them, especially as a foreigner to boot. In a place where identity is assessed principally on two axes (first, foreigner or local; and later, female or male), I felt especially out of place, since locals – once having identified me as a foreigner - could not confidently place me on the female/male axis. I felt unwanted in either camp: uninvited to go work with the park guards, even when I asked; uncomfortable walking alone on the streets; heckled by drunks; plagued by the sense that my counterpart was frequently ignoring my comments and proposals, and knowing that he had requested a male volunteer. Yet neither was I invited to chit-chat with my female counterparts, or asked to help them at events, and was met with skepticism that I could do my own cooking and cleaning, or live on my own safely. It seems like I ought to offer some sort of breakthrough, a turning point to all of this; but there hasn’t been one, really. I’ve simply gone about figuring my identity here by getting to know more and more people, trying to prove the various ways in which I am capable and responsible. Being female has given me a distinct advantage with the wonderful women's groups here. And I've had the numerous little rebellions: taking joy in carrying heavy things in front of my counterpart and the park guards, wielding a machete, hiking fast; fixing technology; wearing corte when I get the chance; and always requesting in a quiet but firm way the respect I feel I deserve - not as a foreigner or a woman, but as a person.

Former volunteers told me before I went that it would be impossible to stay vegetarian in Guatemala. I had also heard there would be an enormity of fresh vegetables available. Coming from the school of “eat what works for you”, I wasn't put off by the idea of being surrounded by staunchly adamant meat-eaters, but I was wondering how I would get along as an omnivore. It turns out Guatemala does offer a beautiful variety of fresh vegetables and fruits, as well as legumes and ground nuts and grains. You can thrive here on a vegetarian and even vegan diet for a fraction of what it would cost in the US. At the same time, I’ve eaten more meat in the past 16 months than I had in the 12 years preceding Peace Corps. Hmm. So, why the curious contradiction? The first months were easiest. I was living in a training town near the capital, with a family that had hosted more than a dozen foreigners before. The week of site visit to my permanent placement also seemed to portend great things when on the way to site we stopped with my counterpart at a restaurant that had black-bean burgers. Black-bean burgers, I tell you! That seemed the perfect moment to frontload to my counterpart I was didn’t eat meat, before he could offer me any. Phew, good to get that one out of the way. OK. Right. Fast forward two weeks, Good Friday, my counterpart invites me up to the park with him and a friend for a little picnic. It’s our first bonding opportunity, and let’s just say they didn’t bring black-bean burgers. Some people might not understand this, but at that moment, preserving my counterpart’s ego was way way way more important than preserving my vegetarian diet. That was the gateway meal. After that, I quickly learned that avoiding meat was not worth the social discomfort for me. First of all, it is very rude here to refuse offered food. Another thing is that most people (like my counterpart) just don’t understand the phrase “I don’t eat meat” the way I do. Most families consume meat infrequently – at most twice a week. It’s the special food many enjoy to celebrate occasions and break up the monotony of the week, the way I looked forward to pizza take-out on Fridays in the US. It’s also expensive. A pound of chicken costs about the same in my town as it does in the US, while unadjusted average family income here is roughly 1/27 of what it is in the US. So meat is occasional – except during special occasions, which happen to be 90% of the time I eat local food. Why would you avoid eating something that is rarely eaten and only to celebrate special occasions? There's a cultural divide there that can be tough to cross, and when I don’t know the person well, I definitely accept the meat. If no one’s watching and my body feels like meat is just not preferable at the moment, I sometimes squirrel it away for Oliver and my favorite street dogs. Fundamentally what it comes down to is that my desire to maintain social harmony is stronger than my belief in strict vegetarianism. Objectively speaking I think accepting meat has helped me build confidence with people here, but it was really a personal choice. No one absolutely forced me, and I am quite a push-over sometimes. My advice to future vegetarian PCVs is not to stress out about it. Peace Corps is unlikely to put you in one of the few countries where you’ve got to eat lots of meat to survive, and if you’re like me it will be a time when you have more fresh, cheap vegetables than you know what to do with. And if a little chicken has to slip in there occasionally, well, at least it’s probably free range!

Immigration is a central force of life in my town. Everyone I know has a family member who has lived in the US. What’s more the municipality estimates some 5,000 to 7,000 people from my town still reside in the United States, some with legal residency and others not. Some have been as long as 15 or 20 years without returning to see family, without seeing the sons they conceived. Some will never return, due to dangers in the crossing, trouble with gangs or drugs in the US, fear or distaste for returning here. Many are children, US citizens, who have never seen Guatemala and rarely have heard their parents’ mother tongue.

If you can even imagine the scale of this migration, at one point there were over 700 men from my town working in the same turkey slaughterhouse in North Carolina. There are few families here now without a big US-style house, improved-wood-burning stove, electricity and running water. Many have much more: a television, a computer, a video-camera, a car, a gas stove, a hot-water heater, money to send the kids to high school. If life has improved significantly in my town since 1990, I would argue it is not for the major part due to the work of NGOs or the central government or well-intentioned Peace Corps Volunteers. It is because thousands of people – completely outside of any formal system - risked their lives, sacrificed their families, their children, and comfort, worked 60 hours a week for years, with little recognition or benefit, save for the knowledge of an exchange rate that would favor their savings back home.

There are real people behind these stats, some of whom you may know over there, and many others that I know here- still trying to calculate the balance of the gambit they made years ago. Take my friend Elida for instance. Life has not been easy for her since she returned to the US after 12 years away. Her eldest son was 4 when she and her husband left him with his grandmother and took off. He won't talk to her anymore. Like other young men in town, the memory of the betrayal has all but poisoned him, and he grows his hair long, wanders around with a local “gang”, has quit school, drinks heavily. He openly detests his younger siblings, ages 8 and 10, both US citizens– and recently provoked a serious fistfight with his mother. Meanwhile the guilt sits on his mother's back, unmoving as she quietly goes about reconciling reality with the dreams that pushed her to cross two borders and leave behind her child.

Her youngest kids had a tough time at first on returning to Guatemala. They were picky about local food (tamales, herbs, boiled potatoes), teased at school for not speaking Mam, struggled to read Spanish. They acted out, missing their father and their old lives. The most animated I saw them was when we made tunafish sandwiches once, for the first time since they'd returned to Guatemala. They ate happily, chatting on and on about the US, asking for seconds and even thirds. Such a simple thing with so much memory, meaning, comfort behind it.

Months later, they’re adjusting somewhat and doing alright in school. Their mother is heavily involved in the Catholic church and weaves to make extra income and pass the time. And perhaps their father will finally come home this Christmas. But they're haunted by the specter of their older brother, who comes around to fight their mother on occasion. Their mother, for her part, is not sure she believes herself anymore when she says her husband will be coming soon. Given the wide the effects of immigration - greater financial security and material comfort, loss of cultural and social identity, familial disintegration, and increased consumerism – it would be impossible to say that immigration has been all good or all bad for my town. It has been both. It is both. It is the people’s solution, and one that they will always try to employ so long as it is so difficult to make a good, steady living here. It turns out that desperation is something you can't legislate away.

A day in Peace Corps is definitely going to vary depending on your country, community, and program. It’s also going to vary a lot by individuals. So the day I share here isn’t that representative of a “normal” day, because such a thing is hard to define! But it does represent an important part of the whole experience. Let's call it, "Walking in the Woods".

6:30 am: My first alarm goes off. I snooze it twice, springing out of bed at 6:50 with 10 minutes to get to the muni. 7:12 am: I roll around to the muni, my counterpart isn’t in sight, the muni pick-up is gone, and seems to have left me. Wondering how I’m going to get up to the forest to give the educational walk I’m scheduled for. I wait for my guiding partner to show up.

7:20 am: I fumble through an unnecessary but gratifying conversation in Mam to buy two rice paches for breakfast in the plaza. I eat them standing there on the spot. 7:31 am: Turns out my counterpart went to get saplings in the municipal tree nursery. He arrives, we pile in and are on our way up to the forest. My partner and I separate from my counterpart at a crucial junction - he continues on to reforest with another school - and we walk about 20 minutes through the forest to reach the recreational center. 8:29 am: We make it to the center. Plenty of time to sweep inside, flush toilets, and brush up my partner on the plan for the hike. 8:31 am: Surprise! The kids arrive in pick-up truck, rather than on foot as we expected. All 25 mob us, greeting us in the traditional manner, bowing their heads so that we can touch them one by one. They’re all considerably younger than we thought, 1st and 2nd graders rather than 6th graders. 8:57 am: The kids have shaken out the arrival excitement, stored their bags in the visitors’ center and are assembled on the basketball court bleachers. Since we've only really practiced a curriculum geared for adolescents and adults,, I decide on the spot to focus the walk on the theme of “the senses” and paying attention to the forest. My partner isn't comfortable improvising, and I don’t speak Mam - the kids' primary language - so we’ll see how it goes with me leading and her doing evaluations in Mam.

10:30 am: We arrive back to the visitors’ center. The hike went well, aside from the constant distraction of blackberry bushes, which the kids attacked with uniformly ruthless enthusiasm. (Yeah. Leave No Trace. Forget about that one.) I feel like although it was a short time, most of the kids felt a spark, that precursor to a positive emotional connection with the forest and a great step to actively caring for it. At a minimum they learned what a volcano is, and why it's not good to cut down the endangered Guatemalan Fir (Pinabete)! I have to remind myself that each walk is just one tiny step in a long process.

11:00 am: The two teachers prepare lunch, steak with tortillas, orange soda, and refried beans from a can. 1:15 pm: Lunch eaten, we close up the visitors’ center and the teachers give us a ride back to town. 2:19 pm: We missed the muni’s lunch break, but I go home to relax and end up reading awhile. 3:30 pm: I arrive back in the office. Despite the Friday atmosphere, my officemate is working on a revision of a trash management plan due Monday. I take advantage of the moment to discuss with her and my counterpart about setting aside funds for trash management in the park. 5:00 pm: As usual, ideas are zig-zagging around without direct treatment, visitors interrupt the train of thought, and when the hour arrives, we leave without any really firm agreements. What’s more important, after all? Work or the weekend?! 5:15 pm: My head is full– the last week of the month always feels this way. But writing out my to-do list and next month’s calendar will wait for Saturday morning, and I’m glad I don’t have any real plans for the weekend. I go home, eat a snack, and write for awhile. 8:13 pm: My boyfriend shows up online! But first I’ve got to make dinner. 9:30 pm: I eat and we chat a bit. This is always the highly anticipated event of the day. 10:31 pm: Off to sleep! Looking forward to a relaxing Saturday morning. And then it's back to the woods again on Sunday!

In Mom and Dad's 'Hobbit' Adventure, Part 1 Mom talked about their trip itinerary and the highlights of their trip. Here she addresses her "most memorable experience", as well as some of the challenges and lessons learned.

Hobbit Adventures in Guatemala, Part 2

My vote for most memorable experience: Steph’s birthday party, attended by approximately 100 of her friends, colleagues, and neighbors. It was an overwhelming, exhilarating and Monty Python-esque introduction to her town, including:

-- Steph’s posse of energetic and enthusiastic neighborhood kids, who appeared en masse the moment we arrived and who unloaded rental chairs, swept the floors, and made decorations for the walls.

-- Our introduction to Oliver the cat: the “gifts” he left strategically placed around the house, apparently as a token of his displeasure at being left alone for several days.

-- The thick cloud of smoke that filled the house when Steph’s friends decided to heat a large pot of water for tea on the woodstove (never before used by Steph), and discovered too late that the flue was not working properly.

-- Awkward but wonderful conversations in a mix of beginner English and phrase book Spanish.

-- Songs and speeches - a standard feature of any Guatemalan party. Don and I were called upon to make remarks, which Steph appropriately embellished while translating.

-- The ladies who, with no advance plan, seamlessly fed 100 people (including an inebriated fellow who wandered in off the street) in a room the size of a one car garage.

-- The hospitality and generosity of Steph’s friends, neighbors, and colleagues, who greeted us so warmly and who brought many gifts.

Guatemalan challenges:

o- Remembering not to use the tap water for teeth brushing.

o- Remembering not to eat raw/undercooked veggies (and the consequences of ignoring this rule).

o- The unavailability/unreliability of hot water, even in the fancier hotels.

o- It’s a noisy place! Traffic, thin walls, loud parrots/roosters/music

o- It’s a crowded place! People are used to cramming into small spaces – chicken busses, pickup trucks, markets, sidewalks, etc. North American concepts of personal space do not apply.

o- It’s a traffic free-for-all! As Mario pointed out, Guatemalans do what they want when they want, without much regard for traffic rules and the personal safety or comfort of others. There is no hostility or malice involved, no yelling at other drivers or pedestrians; it’s just an accepted fact of life.

Lessons learned:

-- Cleanliness is a relative concept. I now understand what Steph meant when she arrived home at Christmas and announced that she would eat off our kitchen floor.

-- Time to start studying Spanish! I had forgotten how frustrating it is not to have the words to express oneself. Communication is the key to understanding each other, and having the right words is the first step.

-- Having more options and more amenities does not necessarily translate into having more happiness. The people we met in Steph’s hometown seem very content and fulfilled, even though they live in what most Americans would consider “Third World” conditions. Since arriving home I have been struck by how the proliferation of choices and “conveniences” seems to increase stress, rather than reducing it.

-- It was humbling to realize how much I have taken for granted and how little I have understood about the lives of people in other countries. Experiencing another culture (even in the limited way that we did) opens the door to real understanding.

Thank you, dear Steph, for creating this amazing experience, and for your endless patience in guiding us through our Guatemalan adventure. As any true adventure should, this experience has changed the way we think and feel. My heart and my head are full of Guatemala, and I will never be the same.

Editor's final note: Seeing the impact it has on my parents, I see how direct, personal, human exchange between people of different cultures is crucial for the future of our increasingly connected species. It's true you have to be careful as a tourist in a country like Guatemala not to get over your head - but when you push yourself just a little bit out of your comfort zone, the lessons can be profound.

So take a day or a week or a month. Get to know the world from another culture's point of view. The lessons will linger long after the adventure's finished.

A month ago my parents landed on my doorstep for an unforgettable two weeks of intercultural exchange, great coffee, and family bonding. I always like to see things from a different perspective, so I thought we'd mix it up a bit and pass my mom the pen. Here's what she has to say about her experience:

Hobbit Adventures in Guatemala

Those of you who read this blog know Steph as a person who seeks out new challenges and who embraces the adventures that come with traveling to new places and meeting new people. So it would be reasonable for you to assume that she learned her adventurous ways from her parents. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Don and I are hobbit-like in our devotion to the familiar and our anxiety about the unknown. The words of Bilbo Baggins (from Chapter 1 of The Hobbit) come to mind: “We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can't think what anybody sees in them.” Of course, we all know how that story turns out…

So imagine our amazement when in early June we found ourselves in Guatemala, having the biggest adventure of our lives. (Editor's Note: In case you are wondering, the picture above isn't an actual town. It's the "Mayan village" at La Azotea, a cultural center/coffee farm & museum outside of Antigua!)

Our Itinerary:

June 1 and 2: Arrived at the Guatemala City airport, where Steph met us and arranged for a taxi to the lovely resort town of Antigua, about an hour away, where we spent two days and nights.

June 3 and 4: Took a four hour shuttle bus ride from Antigua to the city of Xela (also known as Xelaju, also known as Quezeltenango) in the highlands. It was like traveling to the top of the world! Spent two days exploring Xela and visiting with the family of Steph’s sweetheart (fiancé?).

June 5, 6, and 7: Arrived in Steph’s town about a half hour drive from Xela. Met 100 of her friends and colleagues at her birthday party (see more on this below!). Stayed at Steph’s apartment, visited her worksites and got an up-close look at her day-to-day life in Guatemala.

June 8, 9, and 10: Returned to Xela where we met up with Mario, our host and guide for our stay in the Boca Costa (Pacific Slope) region of Retalhuleu. We stayed at Mario’s beautiful nature preserve and coffee farm, Reserva Patrocinio. We visited Comunidad Nueva Alianza (a coffee and macadamia cooperative where one of Steph’s fellow Peace Corps volunteers lives and works) and a Mayan archeological site, Tak’alik’ Ab’aj. Mario drove us back to Xela on June 10, where we celebrated Steph’s birthday with family at her favorite restaurants and cafes.

June 11-12: Returned to Antigua by shuttle and spent an afternoon and evening enjoying the town, before bidding a reluctant farewell to Steph and Guatemala.

Here are a few of the many highlights from our trip:

o- The shuttle van ride from Antigua to Xela over breathtaking mountain heights, with some interesting young adventurers as our fellow passengers.

o- The birthday party for Steph’s future mother-in-law in her postage stamp -sized living/dining room in Xela, with 8 adults, three children, four birthday cakes, and a riotous mix of Spanish, German, and English conversation.

o- The striking beauty of the volcanoes and the tropical forest at Reserva Patrocinio.

o- Getting to know Mario, owner of Reserva Patrocinio, who is the antithesis of “business as usual” in Guatemala. (In other words, his goals are ambitious but realistic, and he has the skills, focus, and resources to accomplish them.)

o- Spending so much uninterrupted quality time with our accomplished, intelligent, resourceful, perceptive, fun-loving, and compassionate daughter.

My vote for most memorable experience: Steph’s birthday party, attended by approximately 100 of her friends, colleagues, and neighbors. It was an overwhelming, exhilarating and Monty Python-esque introduction to her town, including:

-- Steph’s posse of energetic and enthusiastic neighborhood kids, who appeared en masse the moment we arrived and who unloaded rental chairs, swept the floors, and made decorations for the walls.

-- Our introduction to Oliver the cat: the “gifts” he left strategically placed around the house, apparently as a token of his displeasure at being left alone for several days.

-- The thick cloud of smoke that filled the house when Steph’s friends decided to heat a large pot of water for tea on the woodstove (never before used by Steph), and discovered too late that the flue was not working properly.

-- Awkward but wonderful conversations in a mix of beginner English and phrase book Spanish.

-- Songs and speeches - a standard feature of any Guatemalan party. Don and I were called upon to make remarks, which Steph appropriately embellished while translating.

-- The ladies who, with no advance plan, seamlessly fed 100 people (including an inebriated fellow who wandered in off the street) in a room the size of a one car garage.

-- The hospitality and generosity of Steph’s friends, neighbors, and colleagues, who greeted us so warmly and who brought many gifts.

Guatemalan challenges:

o- Remembering not to use the tap water for teeth brushing.

o- Remembering not to eat raw/undercooked veggies (and the consequences of ignoring this rule).

o- The unavailability/unreliability of hot water, even in the fancier hotels.

o- It’s a noisy place! Traffic, thin walls, loud parrots/roosters/music

o- It’s a crowded place! People are used to cramming into small spaces – chicken busses, pickup trucks, markets, sidewalks, etc. North American concepts of personal space do not apply.

o- It’s a traffic free-for-all! As Mario pointed out, Guatemalans do what they want when they want, without much regard for traffic rules and the personal safety or comfort of others. There is no hostility or malice involved, no yelling at other drivers or pedestrians; it’s just an accepted fact of life.

Lessons learned:

-- Cleanliness is a relative concept. I now understand what Steph meant when she arrived home at Christmas and announced that she would eat off our kitchen floor.

-- Time to start studying Spanish! I had forgotten how frustrating it is not to have the words to express oneself. Communication is the key to understanding each other, and having the right words is the first step.

-- Having more options and more amenities does not necessarily translate into having more happiness. The people we met in Steph’s hometown seem very content and fulfilled, even though they live in what most Americans would consider “Third World” conditions. Since arriving home I have been struck by how the proliferation of choices and “conveniences” seems to increase stress, rather than reducing it.

-- It was humbling to realize how much I have taken for granted and how little I have understood about the lives of people in other countries. Experiencing another culture (even in the limited way that we did) opens the door to real understanding.

Thank you, dear Steph, for creating this amazing experience, and for your endless patience in guiding us through our Guatemalan adventure. As any true adventure should, this experience has changed the way we think and feel. My heart and my head are full of Guatemala, and I will never be the same.

Mom and Dad’s visit went off pretty much without a hitch. I’ve been back to work for about two weeks now, and I’ll be excited to put up a guest post from them soon! In the meanwhile, I’ve been reflecting a lot about balance. Over the past year, I’ve often felt like I was ricocheting from one thing to the next – work to dinner to binging on the Internet to sleep to work to the bare necessary housework to lunch to the bare necessary social interaction to work to dinner, and so on and so forth. It’s so easy to become addicted to repetitive, meaningless thought and action – and so hard to break those patterns. I think this imbalance has partly been due to my laptop – unlike my first six months in Guatemala, having a laptop has made me feel like I have to be “on” 100% of the time. If my work day’s a wash, well, I feel I should be making up for it at night. The only problem is that’s just not realistic. I’m mentally spent at the end of the day from juggling a million loose ends, exercising patience, keeping a positive face on. So getting home, numbly standing around for 5 minutes thinking "What am I doing?", putting on the computer and vegging out on blogs and Facebook until my boyfriend comes on Skype, feeling guilty about it, and falling asleep the minute we hung up, has become the norm. And, to combat matters, I’ve always had a bit of a perfectionists’ personality – I’ve got a huge mental to-do list but if I can’t get the job done 100%, I don’t want to start it at all. That lends itself to a lot of wasted time diddling or fretting in between other tasks. Last week, I finally struck more balance than I’ve experienced in at least a year of living here. Part of it was surely Mom and Dad’s visit - almost 10 days of hot showers, clean hotel rooms, parental coddling, being the boss of your own schedule, and no cooking, cleaning, or work, will leave a psyche somewhat rejuvenated. Their trip was something I had been planning for awhile and I was also just psyched that it all turned out so well. Immediately following that I had a crazy week with a day of food poisoning, a handicrafts workshop, a meeting of the local economic development commission, finishing our SPA proposal for the sign project, and two walks up to the park in two days (about 13 miles and 3000 ft gained and lost - not that’s a ton but exercise it felt great.) After the second walk, I’m not sure what it was, but some small voice in my head told me to turn off the nagger inside me and focus on doing something cool, new, break out of the pattern, tackle some of the things on my to-do list that I always brush aside. So the next day I bought, chopped, and over the next three days subsequently ate a full head of turnip leaves, something I’ve been meaning to do forever. I stayed away from the office (Trap of Distraction and Death to Productivity) for two afternoons and thought about my Masters’ project, something which has been needing attention. I started adding other little tasks to the day – deleting a few emails every day to break up the big task of cleaning my Gmail box – setting a bedtime regardless of the boyfriend – giving myself 5 minutes for Facebook and my favorite blogs, no more - doing whatever dishes are in the sink nightly, just to have it off my mind. I’m not 100% every day but I know the tasks will be there waiting for me when I can get to them. I'm realizing that changing habits for the better is all about breaking big jobs down into smaller jobs, and then making these smaller jobs daily habits. Chab'aku, poco a poco, little by little, as they say here. The sense of accomplishment becomes this self-reinforcing thing: cool, we've got that one thing pretty under control, now let's take on that other little thing in the back of my head that was bugging me!

Part of my optimism may be that I’m feeling a lot more progress with official work than I have in awhile – the sign project proposal was approved, my Masters’ project is going, stuff with the tourism commission, womens’ handicrafts, trash management, English lessons, are moving forward somewhat. And I got permission for the park guards to take a 40-hour first aid course this week, something I'd been dreaming about for awhile! So I am starting to finally feel that I can leave contented that I tried my hardest. Regardless of the number of saplings that survive ultimately, I have been planting and watering and taking care of a whole frick ton of seeds. And that’s just about all you can do. There isn’t a forest on the planet that grew up overnight, nor without seeing its fair share of stragglers and drop-outs and plain old failures to thrive. Right?

AKA: Everything I know about parenting I learned from my Peace Corps pet^

(^I know my mother is sarcastically thinking, “Oh, great! What skills you have. Maybe my grandkids will pee all over the house, too!” – Don’t worry, Mom! I promise we’ll get it together before then.)

I’ll put it out there that for better at times and worse at times, I might be a bit sensitive and a worry-wart (especially when it comes to cute fuzzy things, e.g. I distinctly remember getting a chocolate bunny for Easter when I was 4 and crying my eyes out over the idea of eating it.)

So having a pet in Guatemala has been a great training ground for me for the emotional challenges of larger life including, I would think, actual parenthood. While the stakes are a lot lower here (pet versus human child), the risks are, I'd argue, a bit higher (callous neighbors! poison! millions of ferocious street dogs! flash floods! i could go on...) So it is a legitimate "training-ground", in its own way.

So, what am I in process of learning about parenting?:

(1) If you love them, you have to give them some degree of freedom.

This is obvious, right? But not something that comes to me instinctively. I would love nothing more than to keep Oliver locked up inside my house all day, and in fact tried for quite some time. The problem is that he is clearly not meant to be an indoor cat. He gets antsy, whiny, and poops in my bed. So it doesn't work for me, and it doesn't work for him.

This clearly applies to humans, too. We've got to get out and face the real world, to some degree, at some point. A life with good health, positive relationships, and material security, but with no freedom, variety, or adventure, is probably not a truly happy one.

(2) Related to #1, You can’t protect them from everything, and maybe that's a good thing.

My heart got torn out of my chest one night when Oliver was wandering outside at my old house and got into a fight that left him shaken, with a deep wound on his arm. But he probably learned a good thing or two about street fights, I'd imagine.

(3) Enjoy them while you can!

It seems just yesterday Oliver was a tiny 3 lb. bean bag curled up under my arm, pawing my stocken feet, living contentedly enclosed in a 150 sq. ft room, and rabidly chasing anything that moved. I could cut his nails, put him in a 10" x 10" box and carry him to the moon and back, wear him as a mitten, etc. Now he's about 20 times that size, eats like a horse, and would rather see me bleed than play good-naturedly or let me pick a measly flea off his neck.

(4) You're not going to win all the battles.

OK. So Oliver wants to pee in the corner of the bathroom while I'm peeing? That's fine. At least we're restricting it a little bit. The kitchen and my bedroom are still sacred, pup.

(5) Sometimes you have to make them do things they don’t like, for their own good.

Antibiotics via that gross powder suspension. Vaccinations. Bus rides to the vet. Nail clippings. Bathing. Flea combing. Not all that controversial until you're on the sharp end of 10 claws powered by an irrational dragon-cat. Or, I imagine, an irrational screaming toddler.

(6) Let's hope my kid doesn't have discipline issues, because I am not going to be the one to solve them.

See #4. Really doesn't bother me enough to do anything about it. At all. I'm unfortunately prone to slow reaction times and forgetting to enforce the household rules. Maybe when the time comes we can work out some sort of good-cop compensates for spacey-cop routine with my boyfriend.

At the end, though, what can I say? Perhaps like real parenting, having Oliver in my life has been totally worth every stress. Thanks, my little love!

This post is particularly time-appropriate, since my own parents will be setting foot down in Guatemala for the first time this Wednesday, for 12 days of vacation (including my 25th birthday!). Having your kid in Peace Corps must feel at least a little bit - or way worse - than letting your cat roam the Guatemalan streets; so thanks, Mom and Dad, for supporting my decision to join Peace Corps! I'll look forward to posting about our trip, and perhaps we'll see a snazzy guest post from each of them about our adventures.

(This all, I should amend, is not a closed-book story. As I post this, Oliver is sitting on my lap, purring and implying he'd love to be let out, and he's been alternating with running up on the roof crying his heart out. But I just can't do it! I don't want him out there tonight.)

One of the most interesting aspects of life here for me has been adapting to different communication styles. In the beginning I was mellow and hanging out, flexible and just getting used to things, learning “when yes means yes and yes means no” (in the wise words of our training director). Now that I’m in my last year, I’ve been getting more antsy to get something done, and mastering “indirect-speak” has been more important than ever, to be able to be direct and pushy, without actually being super-direct and super-pushy. An insider’s peek into the meanings between the lines of some real situations there in the town hall:

What You Say (WYS): Yes, that is totally necessary. I agree. What You Mean (WYM): The idea may interest me right now in this particular second since you happen to mention it, but the honest truth is that I would probably watch paint dry for 24 consecutive hours than follow through on what you’re proposing.

WYS: “Yeah, that’s what I’m looking at, that seems good to me, we’ll do that.” WYM: “It seems that I genuinely agree with you, since I am nodding and making eye contact with you, but in reality I’m actually mentally planning which fields I’m going to be planting potato in next weekend, I’ll get back to you on that idea next year, if I remember.”

WYS: Let’s have a meeting on the 13th. WYM: Actually, let’s plan to have a meeting on the 13th, but it’ll actually be held a week earlier, and we’ll call you between two days and two minutes before to let you know.

WYS: Okay, we’ll leave at 9 tomorrow. WYM: If I’m feeling punctual, I’ll roll in around 10:30.

WYS: Yes, I will be there tomorrow. WYM: I would really love to be there tomorrow, however, since I already have six other obligations for that same time, it will be difficult for me to actually arrive. However, I hope you will accept my agreement to be there as an apology in advance for my absence.

WYS: Yes. I’d love to. WYM: Probably not.

WYS: Yes, that’s fine. WYM: No, not likely.

You also have subtle differences. Aside from downright fibbing and an aversion to saying no, Guatemalan language and exchange is simply quite formal and protracted. For example, instead of “Could you pass me my pen please?”, you have to say, “Could you do me the big favor of passing me my pen?” or “Will it be that you can pass me my pen?” or “I don’t know if you could do me the big favor of passing me my pen?” Another clear example: the ubiquitous “welcome” and “acknowledgements” that must be given at every public forum, lest people flip out due to the informality of it all. What in the US would be, “Thanks everyone for coming”, turns into: “Before everything else, I just would like to thank everyone for their presence today, anticipating their valuable efforts in carrying out this small project which we are carrying out, and which I am sure will prove to be quite valuable for us.” Obviously, there is a lot of room for Guatemalans to be perceived as long-winded and pointless, and for we gringos to be perceived as downright rude. And then you also have the other side of indirect speak: What You Say is What You Mean, but the Guatemalan listener is reverse-translating into Oblique Speak, converting WYS/WYM into What He or She Understands. I’m getting better at recognizing such situations, but this has happened to me several times when I forget about cultural differences, and chatter away to people as if I were at a sorority social, thinking they will appreciate my friendliness, e.g.: What You Say/What You Mean: [to a person who is arriving late]: Gosh, you must have a lot of work to do today! What He/She Understands: I am personally offended by your tardiness, explain yourself.

WYS/WYM: “Don’t worry, there’s no rush, we’ll be here until 5.” WHSU: “There is a rush, be sure to get back to me by 5!” (If there really was no rush, you wouldn’t say anything at all. That’s the assumed baseline state of existence.)

Needless to say, daily communication here is quite interesting.

One of the most valuable benefits of Peace Corps service, I think, is an extended-length, purely experiential lesson on culture. So what is culture? I read a few things for a graduate sociology class once about culture, but in the past year I’ve had the chance to live it and reflect on it quite a bit in the past year and change, and I think the metaphor of culture as a shared “mental” map – which I first came across in Earl Babbie’s work, I think – is particularly helpful.

So culture: comprises the shared features of individuals´ mental maps that indicate, like those of any map, both the nature of reality and how to navigate that reality.

To borrow the idea and develop it a little further: From birth we develop a mental map which is somewhat congruent with that of others around us, most heavily influenced by family, friends, teachers, and other influential persons. Every person has one of these maps, and each map bares varying or differing similarity to others´ maps. Our map may be close that of our parents´ or totally different, but we will usually share quite a bit in common. And the thing that helps in our native state, city or town, especially our native households, is that we know the landscape intimately. That helps us to converse about a common feature even when we have differing representations on the map. We come to know the subtle range of differences in the representations of these features, and form a catalogue of these representations that we can refer to.

As a PCV not only are you in an unfamiliar landscape, but you are surrounded by people with a different mental map than the one you hold onto. You’re frantically trying to sketch out new features based on what you hear and observe of others. But rather than the 18-21 years you had to form and test the mental map that you carried with you when entering the adult world of the US, you have about six months to make some sort of usuable map of your new landscape, and learn how to orient your own pre-existing mental map with the local map – whenever and however it is necessary.

Sounds tough, and it is. But, it’s do-able. It’s also indispensible to surviving and working in the local culture.

One glorious and easy example is cold beverages. My mental map tells me that cold foods may be of questionable sanitation. I know that Guatemalans´ mental maps usually indicate that it is a bad idea to drink cold things when you have a sore throat. If I feel skeptical that it´s a good idea to take a cold drink I´m offered, I say I´ve got a sore throat. Works like a charm. I don´t have to drink it, and no one is offended that I won´t take what they´ve offered.

To be fair this is kind of a lame trick; I am not getting people to understand my mental map – just manipulating theirs to make it coincide with my own. But what I am finding as a PCV is that depending on the person, getting people to really understand my mental map takes a lot of time, patience, and conversation. Even then there are people – for example, rural male farmers or very old people - with whom I can never really communicate a significant part of my mental map. (That is, the unique part, the part other than what almost all humans have in common, by virtue of certain biological and physiological realities.) Rather, if I want to communicate with them, I have to adapt my mental map to theirs as much as possible. Yet this is challenging, since we’re talking about something both invisible and largely inaccessible to me.

So the natural solution around this is that I gravitate to work most with people whose mental maps are most compatible with mine: young people, school teachers, and young to middle-aged women, that is to say, people with malleable mental maps or whose experience and perspective more closely matches my own. No matter how similar the perspective, you are usually wisest off in trying to guide people to understand, or at least follow, your own mental map using their own.

But no matter how effectively you can bend, mimic, adapt, guide, with people in my town I’m usually left feeling that there will always be significant portions of our mental maps that will be mutually unvisited and misunderstood. And, it’s always treacherously easy to get stuck in the woods, trying to figure out what to make of our conflicting map information, and no compass to mediate our surroundings. In which case, a shrug, a smile, and a change of conversation do wonders.

I almost can´t believe that we swore in as volunteers a year ago today, but I am quite happy to believe it. I´m happy because it´s not been the easiest year of my life – nor most of ours – but we lived it!; happy because it´s been one of the most worthwhile years of my life; happy because I finally see some projects, and the productive work I so crave, lining itself up for this last year. Peace Corps is a crazy rollercoaster – a better explanation of which deserves its own post - but for the most part I feel quite content with where I am, what I´m doing, and the relationships I´ve formed.

Today all of PC/Guatemala´s volunteers - including those just swearing in and those just COSing - sat down in the capital with PC staff, host families, and a handful of dignitaries to commemorate Peace Corp´s 50th anniversary and watch the new volunteers swear in. It was good timing for a celebration; lately it has felt like more is happening in site, both in the confidence I have with people and the concrete projects we´re getting rolling – for interpretative and orientational signage, environmental education with women and schools, an active and successful tourism committee - and – perhaps – even a municipal recycling center.

I know not all of these projects may work, but I feel immensely satisfied just to have arrived at this point, to have managed to plant the seeds in the ground. Even knowing there have been plenty of times when I could have been more proactive, worked just a bit harder or put myself out there a bit more, I also know that I put in my fair share of patience, flexibility, and understanding to get to those seeds planted. And, evening knowing that not all will germinate, I think they will bring something to fruition that is more positive than not.

So looking around at my fellow volunteers and the ones about to start, listening to the speakers reflecting on the accomplishments of the volunteers about to COS or extend their service - I didn´t feel jealousy or the sense of ´¨what-if¨ or aimlessness that has pulled at the back of my brain for some of my service: just the sense of having hard-earned a few days´ pause, a dark beer, celebration with good friends.

It’s been awhile since I’ve last blogged – not for lack of ideas, so much as lack of time. And a lack of attention span, too. Living in semi-urban Guatemala is like keeping both the TV and stereo going full blast. I think it wears out the mind. Or at least, the mind formed from a young age in a small town in the US where the loudest thing around is the occasional dog barking, ambulance siren, or ice cream truck. But at least in the midst of the insanity, some ideas for projects are coming together.

More on that later, but the big news - related to wearing out and lack of time - I have finally moved out of my host family’s house! I lived with them for almost an entire year. The move wasn’t inspired by any particularly acute stimulus, rather a slow build-up of thoughts and wonderings along the theme of: “Hmm, wouldn’t it be nice to…” I find it tough to explain it to local people when they ask me why I left, because I really love the family, and there wasn’t one particular reason.

There were a few obvious drawbacks to being with them: lack of control over the general cleanliness of my environment, lack of space and organization, feeling like I was constantly on stage - all of which were definitely draining me mentally. I never felt like I really had space to think. I also was looking forward to the March-June fly and low-water season with less than excitement, and by default had to leave Oliver to wander freely all day, which led to a couple close calls with street dogs.

Moving out has helped a lot. The neighbors all respect my privacy, I have soo much organizing space it’s glorious, and I have a 50 gallon water tank all to myself. Plus there aren’t any flies in this part of town yet. Oliver is pretty content; he can go up on the porch whenever he wants and I don’t have to worry about him fighting with street dogs. I’ll get to see my host family a few hours every week, which was about equivalent to the amount of really quality time I was spending with them before anyway. (I feel like my relationships with them reached the comfort zone plateau awhile ago - that is to say, our relationships have developed most of their potential, and putting a lot more time into it doesn't really make that much difference.) Plus the family next door is plenty noisy so I don’t feel really lonely. And as an added bonus the Catholic church is a lot less noisy than the neighborhood Evangelical church where I used to live.

The current drawbacks? I don’t get to come home to a hug from my little host brother nor greetings from the fan club, although I’m amassing a new one here; It’s freezing in the house since no one uses the woodstove; incidentally this house has few windows, and I love natural light; there’s no tamales or leftovers; I don’t have access to even a square foot of land; and I have lots more responsibility: I have to buy and cook everything I need; I’m going to have to figure out what to do with my used toilet paper and Oliver’s litter; I have to cart my food scraps over to a neighbor’s; no more washing machine; I have millions of little house maintenance things! The toilet is already seriously backing up which I am taking as an unfortunate sign. And I do live alone, which is a little less secure than I was with the host family, although I live in a busy neighborhood.

That said, I feel like this was a really positive change. Most people will ask me something like: Aren’t you afraid of being on your own? With the obvious undercurrent of: Does this mean you want to entertain unsavory men-folk? Drink alcohol? Do who knows what else? More than being in danger, a woman without chaperone is a very dangerous thing here. I get the idea that society needs to keep behavior in check by directly enforcing collective norms and such. It can’t necessarily trust its members to police themselves through indirect pressure. Yet I don’t think I’ll be up to anything too scandalous- maybe drinking a glass of wine while listening to bluegrass and organizing my kitchen cabinets ;-) I’m pretty sure the neighbors will get over it.

I’m coming close to approaching one year as a PCV. For me, this brings some highly mixed feelings. On the one hand, I’ve made it nearly a year – and there comes with that a strong feeling that the worst is over and the best is yet to come. There also comes with that a visceral comfort in my routine and surroundings. On the other hand, it brings a lot of self-doubts. I’ve been here a year, with what to show for it? Mostly relationships, a semi-successful English class for teachers, a completed tourism diagnostic, and lots of ideas about what could be done this year and in the future. But those hardly seem like professional results.

I just feel skeptical that I will guide our office to accomplish much more in this year - in terms of the overall "plan" - than I did in the past year. I know that it's been really important to wait things out and build confidence with people, but what if I still haven't done enough to lay groundwork for this next year? What could I have accomplished this year - or still accomplish - with a more-thought-out plan, greater persistence, more contact with the community, less fear of offending people, less fear of walking alone, less of a religious insistence on sitting back and observing? What could I have accomplished if my head and heart hadn't been floating detached from me for the first months here, living from phone call to phone call and e-mail to e-mail with my significant other?

It becomes difficult to sort out where the external challenges begin and I end. Was it I who was detached or did my surroundings work to detach me? Or both? The real gist turns in my mind: what could have been done differently in this past year, whether by me or someone more capable?

But the reality neither is nor was that simple. I am not and was not separate from the challenges I’ve faced. They are part of me and I am part of them; I have to face up to that. The past always seems less messy looking back than the present feels… and I think a large part of this experience is accepting that lesson. But I would really like to strive for greater clarity in what I’m doing in the present, while accepting my internal and external limitations.

Oh the world would swing

If I were king

Can I help it if I

Still dream from time to time?

One of the things I really enjoy about my Peace Corps life is bathing in the Mayan sauna/sweatlodge, which I usually take once a week as my primary bathing method. The temascal or chuj (in Mam) was historically a small round hut made of adobe and mud, built to hold in heat from the fire which heated the water for bathing. It played a very important role in cleansing, healing, and general well-being. It still does.

Despite all of the changes that have occurred to my town's culture since pre-colonial times - due to colonization, civil war, globalization, mass male exodus to the US and a town economy based on remittances - the chuj remains omnipresent. We are but half an hour outside of a major city. The influence of modernity is palpable - yet almost everyone in my town still baths in chuj one or two times a week.

Why? I will let you all, readers, decide that for yourselves - so read on. The modern iteration of the chuj is a little cement-block building, painted black on the inside, with a low bench, a hearth for heating water, hot rocks to create steam (like in Scandinavian saunas) and dsometimes a cold-water spigot. It's tiny; to get inside, you have to stoop over, and precariously balance your weight on the buckets of cold water or a handle or whatever might support you.

The hot air sucks you in for a second and you can't remember what you're supposed to be doing. The heat and steam are intoxicating, the low candlelight dances, you've found another world of being. Washing, okay, right. You sit down, take off your bathrobe - place it off to the side in a dry place. Gingerly scoop some scalding hot water into the mixing pot, then from the cold water bucket, until the water is bearable. The heat will be getting to you at this point, so pour the water all over yourself - careful not to take off your headwrap - you'll get sick if you wet your hair at night.

Also, my friends, forget your swimsuits. Chuj is taken naked, or almost entirely naked. At this point you'll take a loofah and dip in some jabon negro - caustic black soap. Scrub yourself up good. Ask your host mom to get your back. Rinse. Repeat. Not hot enough? Throw a little water on the rocks - but not too much. Many a gringa has gone running for less.

If your family still keeps some of the medicinal traditions, you may take a swath of elder leaves, heat them over the rocks, and smack yourself with the swath repeatedly. Elder is known for its healing properties.

After a time you'll note that you're sweating and that a layer of grime - what they call "grasa" - seems to be lifting itself from your skin - and your mind. Go after the skin with your fingernails, or if you're feeling adventurous, a chunk of pumice. After you bath regularly in chuj you'll noticing this layer disminuing each week.

This is no bucket bath, friends. Forget that purgatory of frigid air and luke-warm water rushed past like any other mundane ritual. This is purification on the highest level.

When the grasa's gone, it's time to get out. And just in time- the heat can make you dizzy, even nauseous - signs you've stayed in too long. Wrap yourself up good and squeeze to get out into the chill air. It'll hit you and you might wobble a little bit, but no cold water or snowbank to jump into here. Are you kidding? You'll have the flu for a year!

Lie down on your bed under a blanket or two, before getting up to dry off and put on pajamas. You'll feel the cleanest, and most relaxed, you have in your life. And at last you'll have an idea why your neighbors rarely use those fancy hot-water showers they installed in homage to US culture.

Wow! Time flew this month. The weather is pretty beautiful, mango season is starting, and my maple syrup is still holding out! Nothing like fluffy pancakes and real maple syrup, I can’t complain. And I am continuously amazed by the fabulous vegetables around... when else in my life will I get all the produce I can eat in a week for $4?

Work is going pretty well, too. This week we are writing a business plan for the park, in order to compete for a $10,000 grant, and I am excited to have the chance to help shape a coherent vision for the park. It’s something that’s kind of been on the back-burner for awhile but there is a lot of potential, if folks would set their minds to developing it more systematically.

This next month I hope to finally write up our plan for environmental interpretation, a grant for signs, and begin training our park guards and the two educators to give educational walks on local environment and culture. On Feb 25 the local school principals will come up to the park to see our big educational pitch: why they should bother bringing their students up to us? So that’ll be a big day.

Next Sunday I am going to start teaching an English class to women’s groups (mostly artesania groups that want to sell to gringos and a few teachers left over from the winter course). It’s certainly a means to an end, and not the end itself – but a great way to make friends.

It’s also really time to get rolling on my Masters’ project! And I’ve taken up Mam lessons again. And big news: I found a house for Oliver and me to move into next month! So life is plenty busy. Every day brings its challenges and joys (both big and little). I'm used to it. I kind of like the rollercoaster, at this point.

Oliver got hurt last night – not really sure how, I think he may have gotten in a fight with another animal. He has a wound on his arm and won’t walk on it. I was pretty freaked out, but, my vet back home recommended an antibiotic and I think he will heal up. I realize more and more how important he is to me for companionship. This is a case in which I am really grateful to be in a town with 7 pharmacies! Way easier on the nerves.

Hard to believe that it has been over two weeks since I got back from my Christmas vacation tothe US. And what a vacation it was. One thing Peace Corps has given me is the sense of how important it is to take breaks, to have a change of scenery, to say yes instead of no. Home was a much-needed jolt back to broader reality and my broader self.

It was a whirlwind two weeks, full of Christmas gatherings, seeing friends and family, drinking lots of tap water, and eating lots and lots of good food. We also had a few fun outings, to the local childrens’ play museum, an abridged winery tour, a pilgrimage to Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca, and two nights at a bed and breakfast for New Years’. It was really fun. The US is really nice, in its own way.

An abridged list of mind-boggling and beautiful things I encountered: SnowMy family My brother My boyfriend Gringos everywhere, who don’t greet with ¨good morning¨Speaking English to strangers in public My family’s enormous cats (see picture at right. animals are genuinely ENORMOUS in Central New York) Our Christmas treeWegmans! The food! : Tofu, salads, take-out, brownies, pecan pie, pizza, lasagna, almond milk, five kinds of cereal mixed together, omelettes and homefries, Veggie dogs and burgers, Mom’s mac and cheese, Grandpa’s pancakes, Tex-Mex food, we could go on...Toilet paper going down the toilet bowlTrash management Drinking water out of the faucetHot water out of the faucet

Christmas and its traditions! Despite the comforts of home, coming back to Guatemala was not as tough as I had thought it might be. Being with family and being in a different culture are two very different things, but each has its own distinct challenges. On January 6 we completed a year in Guatemala, and I feel so accustomed to life here - tortillas and tamalitos, spinning through curves on the micro with reggaton blasting, the dusty countryside, Spanish, the burning sun and freezing nights, waiting, waiting, and waiting some more, my own cooking, the little oases I’ve found here. The maple syrup and nutritional yeast I brought back aren't going to hurt morale, either.

And, there is plenty of work to be done... HOW is just the question. The tough thing right now - I think typical for a volunteer at my stage of the game - is seeing how few concrete projects I have truly rolling in progress after these 9 months – including my Masters’ thesis – and wondering – how will this all work out? I have lots of ideas and smaller starts (as you might have gotten from my previous blog entry on work) but they seem to be constantly modulating based on the changes around me. I feel like I absorb my town's sense of inertia at times, too, which is tempting since waiting gives more time to assess, understand, before making any mistakes.

I've realized that assessing is good, but life is full of mistakes no matter how much thought you give things. And could trying to avoid them so adamantly not be its own mistake, too? This month the not-so-perfectionist side of me is being called to task for the next year, to make leaps and decide directions and make mistakes, to be more proactive here than I've been before. The results might be messy, but it’s really time to get down to work.

December 6 was the 11-month anniversary of our arrival here in Guate! Crazy. Here in site I've passed my first July 4th, my first birthday, my first Halloween, and my first Thanksgiving away from the US. I've also passed my first Semana Santa, my first Guatemalan summer, my first feria, my first Guatemalan Independence Day, and my first All Saints' Day - ever. (That's the beauty of Peace Corps - you get to celebrate twice the number of holidays!) I've painted gourds, adorned graves, made Thanksgiving dinner - with cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie! - kept a "countdown chain" like a 6-year-old, sung Advent carols over a candle wreath, baked Christmas sugar cookies. Sharing all of these little traditions - new or old - mine or others' - has been special for me, given me that sense of community and place which is so crucial.

The recent holidays have given me a lot of time to reflect on the purpose and evolution of tradition, both in my own life and for people generally. I live with an Adventist host family that doesn't celebrate traditional holidays, and while I respect them for their strong convictions, I realize that the holidays I celebrated as a kid will always be important to me. I went back and forth a little awhile about whether or not to go home, but ultimately I decided I would. I love my host family, and the commercialism at Christmas turns me off too, but the idea of missing Christmas at home was blatantly unappealing. I am really glad I made that choice. You can share your traditions with people who are knowing them for the first time, or create a new tradition for the first time, but I think it's a whole other level to share those traditions with the people you've always shared them with. That's not to say new traditions can't be created with those you care about, but to the extent I can celebrate childhood traditions with the people who accompanied me in my childhood, the greater the abundance of joy in my life. To be in the same place, with the same decorations, the same food, the same people. Not to say that new traditions or people can't be included, but I realize that Christmas at home gives me a profound sense of belonging, a profound sense of security, a profound sense that the world has continuity. It's hard to describe. This will be the longest vacation I've taken since starting Peace Corps, and my first visit to the US - so I expect it will be tough in some ways to come back. At the same time I feel I'm much more integrated with my community and my work at this point than I was before - and I think there will plenty of people and things that I miss about here when I'm home - tamalitos, my little host siblings, friends, etc. There is plenty for me here in Guatemala; you can just never tell how it's going to balance out in your heart, is the thing. I'll keep the blog updated on the subject!

It's that time again - just one month until another group of volunteers arrive here in Guate, the group that will arrive on my group's one-year anniversary in country! To mark the occasion, I'd thought I'd offer a few packing tips to those who might be reading. First of all, you don't need to prepare to be out in the middle of nowhere for two years straight, nor buy a bunch of fancing camping gear and clothes. Guatemala is a very commercialized country, and most sites are comparatively not too rustic. Almost all volunteers have electricity and are within three hours of a supermarket/commercial center with products very much like those you'd buy in the US. Some are farther out, but still have more access to supermarkets and such than you would in, say, Mali.

Quality used clothing (paca) is cheap and abundant throughout Guatemala, and during training you have the chance to drop by the paca in Antigua's market. There's also a supermarket called Bodegonia for toiletries and such.

There is some stuff that is more expensive or non-existent here: electronics (computers, cameras), outdoor gear, some footwear, speciality toiletries. If needed, I'd stock up on that stuff before coming here.

My advice: (1) Clothes: You may end up in a hot, temperate, or cold site, but in training days are warm and nights are cool or cold. Guatemalans dress up for business or family occasions, but for hanging out or going shopping or around town you can wear whatever (within reason). If you have doubts about a clothing item, leave it, cos if it turns out you do need it you can find an equivalent in the used clothing stores (paca). I'd bring:

Two week supply of underwear3-4 + outfits just to hang out or hike or mess around in - jeans, shorts, capris, t-shirts, tank tops, skirts, dresses2-3 business casual outfits to wear to the Peace Corps office (whether you'll need them in site depends)1-2 going-out outfits if that's your thing (women get really dressed up here; men can get away with jeans and a collared shirt) bathing suit (hot springs, ocean, who knows?)

comfortable pajamas2-3 hoodies, fleeces, or sweaters; hat; gloves You can always buy warmer or skimpier clothes depending on your site.

(2) Footwear: Strappy sandals, flats (closed or open-toe), or heels are standard for women in business and public generally. For work, I wear hiking sneakers or flats. For hanging out or around town, I wear hiking sneakers, Chacos or flip-flops. I usually tend to be a bit underdressed but it works. Men tend to wear dress shoes in business contexts. You can find some shoes in paca but it's hit or miss for sizes larger than womens' 8 or mens' 10. (3) Raingear: I have a thick rainshell which is useful up here in the Highlands - it's freezing when it rains! - but not essential. If you don't have a rainshell already, you can buy big umbrellas here which work fine anywhere except on the trail. If you anticipate doing a lot of hiking or fieldwork and don't have a functional rainshell, you might think of buying one. In hotter parts of Guate, rainshells can be stifling hot, though.

(4) Toiletries: You can find more or less whatever mainstream stuff you'd find in a US pharmacy or supermarket, and Peace Corps gives floss, cheap sunscreen, etc. It's hard to find biodegradable or herbal soaps or toothpastes (e.g. Dr. Brunner's, Tom's) or good facial sunscreen. Pack a good supply of that stuff if you are picky. Otherwise bring stuff just to get you through the first few weeks of training before you make it to Antigua. (5) Glasses vs. contacts: I gave up my contacts when I came here just because I didn't want the additional hassle or expense, but contact solution is not hard to find in larger cities. (6) For women: Peace Corps provides plentiful Tampax tampons, and you can easily find pads in the corner stores. That said, trash management is non-existent here and I highly recommend the Diva Cup, supplemented with Glad Rags if you are worried about leakage or not into tampons. The money and trash you'll save really adds up. But give them a test run before leaving the US. (8) Cell phone: Every volunteer I know has one. If you have a tri-band phone, you can unlock it in the US and use it in Guatemala with a Tigo, Movistar, or Claro phone number and SIM card. The people in the Tigo store either don't know this or will lie to you so you buy a new phone. Just be insistent. (9) Memory stick: A USB drive is useful for working/printing in Internet cafes or the Peace Corps office. (10) Laptops: Most volunteers have computers. I went the first six months without, but then I got a used netbook and it's been great. Without it, getting work done was more difficult and I was also a lot lonelier at night. Most volunteers have Tigo Internet reception in their sites, and I also got the Tigo cell phone modem to use Skype and check e-mail, which has worked out great for keeping in touch cheaply. Some volunteers love watching DVDs at night, so you might consider an external drive if you're one of those people and your laptop doesn't have one. A note about electronics: Generally speaking, if you use your computer, I-pod, or camera all the time in the US, you will probably want them in Guatemala, too. It can be a good challenge to go without, but keep in mind that the happier you are, the more professional and productive you will probably be. It's definitely a personal choice though. It's nice too to not have to worry about taking care of a bunch of stuff.

(11) Surge protector: This is a good idea if you have a computer, electricity is often unreliable and you don't want to fry your computer. (12) Camera: I have a cheap digital camera I bought used in the states, other friends brought digital SLRs. Photos are popular with host families and digital developing is readily available here. A small card reader can be useful for Internet cafes. (13) I-pod: Some people swear by theirs for sanity. (14) Headlamp: For black-outs, camping, hostels; essential if you do end up one of the PCVs with limited electricity. (15) Rechargable batteries: If you bring electronics that use disposable batteries, I'd recommend rechargable batteries and a charger. It's an investment but they'll save money over time and reduce trash. (No battery recycling here.) (16) A gift for host families or kids: think of stuff you can't get here... a souvenir from your hometown, real maple syrup, etc. The kids will appreciate Hershey's chocolate but it'll taste the same whether you buy it at home or at the grocery in Antigua. (17) Stuff to share with your host family -A pack of cards, a photo album of your family, house, hometown - it's fun to share. You can easily find school supplies or stickers here which are also fun with kids. (18) Ear-plugs!: Guatemala is a noisy country. Depends on your tolerance, but I personally am not into hearing church sermons at 4:30 am on Saturday morning. (19) Nalgene or Kleen Kanteen bottles (or Camelbak if you think you'll do a lot of hiking) - gotta have a place to put that agua pura! (20) Camping gear: If you really love camping, you could think about bringing your own gear with you in case you'd rather not go out with tour operators. Camping off the beaten track is not generally considered a safe activity in Guatemala, but there are definitely plenty of parks where it is safe. A sleeping bag can be useful for regular travel, too. (21) Medium-sized daypack: What is really useful for me and many volunteers is a large school backpack or medium-sized daypack (around 3000-3500 cc) for shorter trips, vacations, and day hikes. It fits in the overhead rack on the camioneta rather than needing to be thrown on top of the bus, which is less hassle in the rush and bustle to get on and off the camioneta, and also safer for your stuff. And what to pack it all in: A big backpackers' pack is convenient for carrying a lot of weight at one time, but if you don't already have one and don't plan on doing extended backpacking trips, it's not an essential. It can be convenient to have a big backpack and one other bag (rolling or duffle) but a regular rolling luggage and a duffle bag works. In most cases you'll never walk very far with all of your luggage combined, so don't feel pressured to buy an expensive backpackers' bag just for that. So that's what I've got. Any comments or questions, feel free to get in touch with me!

Since I'm on a roll with blog posts, I thought I'd roll out one I wrote almost a month ago, about the October 20th holiday, and never got around to posting, about a trip to Champerico with my fellow muni employees.

I sometimes feel as though I am genuinely living in an episode of The Office, if The Office were filmed in Guatemala, in a Maya-Mam town, and followed the activities of the municipalidad (the local town hall). The show would be titled "Ja te' ko'wb'il", which to someone from my town means "La municipalidad." Literally it means something like, "house of power," but it's about as close to "The Office" as we're going to get in the Mam dialect of my town. No more is the sense of being present on some strange comedy show emphasized for me than when the muni employees are gathered collectively, as in the time the head of the office of municipal planning invited us all to his one-year-old daughter's birthday lunch, or when we gather to eat paches (hopefully potato paches) and celebrate's someone's leaving or coming or to plan the important work of stringing up 10 balloons for some crucially important event. For the moment you will need to take my word that the variety of personalities and their interactions is amusing, to say the least. This hit home for me again on Wednesday, with my first experience as a Guatemalan tourist. Every year the muni gives its employees a free outing, and Wednesday was a holiday to celebrate the overthrow of Dictator Jorge Ubico in 1944. The muni employees decided to take advantage of the holiday to ask for an outing to beach at Champerico. (The original choice was Panajachel, but the men revolted and insisted on Champerico, for reasons that later became evident.) The morning started out bright and early (in the dark) at 5:30 am. The rented camioneta (old school bus) was "leaving" at 5 am, which everyone knew meant 6 am (optimistically); but the most eager folks weren't for anything going to miss a free ride to the beach nor free breakfast and lunch at the beach, so they showed up at 5:30. My officemate was one of the eager beavers - she even had what I am pretty sure was strep throat and preferred to go to the beach over the doctor - so at 5:20 am I was dragging myself away from my kitten and a warm bed. Around 6:15 we were making the calls to Persons X, Y, and Z, whom Person Q and Person T knew were coming but still had not made an appearance. At 6:30 Person Z clambered on board without the slightest hint of shame, and off we chugged to pick up two people in an aldea of my town. It also came out that there were people waiting for us down in the nearest big city, but we were going another route and someone made the executive decision to leave them behind. As far as I know, they are probably still waiting for us to pick them up. By 7 we were burning down the highway toward the beach. It was a long ride through some beautiful country. When we actually reached the coastal plain I was struck by how similar it felt to rural New York in summer. Many times in my life I've looked over flat, rolling agricultural plains, humid, hot air bellowing in from open windows. But maybe I'm just a little homesick. We arrived at the beachfront in Champerico and all 33 of us piled into an open-air restaurant for a late breakfast of eggs, refried beans, tortillas, queso fresco, fried plantains, and soft drinks. Then an agricultural volunteer from another foreign organization pulled out an almost-full bottle of rum, which was my first sense of where the day was heading. From that point onward we separated into three groups: the drinking men, the women and abstaining men, and one family (a secretary, her husband who didn't give her permission to go on her own, and her young son). I didn't mind this arrangement, especially because the two guys who hung out with us all day are really good guys and it was fun to have a mixed-gender group. You generally don't hang out with people of the opposite sex in my town unless you're family, work colleagues, or dating, so it was nice to have some of the "hanging out" I was used to in the US.We spent a little time on the beach, but the sun was sweltering hot - it felt like you could burn in just a second. Like a true gringa tourist I was prepared with sunscreen, a sun hat, a light long-sleeved shirt, and an umbrella. I gave my officemates a good laugh with all this ceremony, but they wore awesome huge-brimmed hats with their traje, too. Mom would have been proud. Anyway, after a quick dip in the ocean the consensus was to head to a pool; so we hopped on a bicycle rickshaw and off we went, hearing rumors that there was a good spot a long ways out of town. The driver charged us less than $2 to carry three of us more than a mile in the sweltering heat; it was amazing. I think the bicycle rickshaws were a highlight of the day. It was definitely a relaxing way to travel. That type of technology makes a lot of sense for a flat tourist town without cobbled streets; I'm glad they haven't caught the tuk-tuk plague yet. It was also the first time I had ever received an advertising flyer while on a moving bicycle, from someone else on a moving bicycle. I love bikes. I don't think I had seen a pool in more than nine months, and it was great. This was a real pool (admission $1.25) which had clean-ish showers, changing rooms, and indications of being chlorinated. After an elaborate sunscreen re-application process it was into the water. We took turns diving for a coin and did some laps. Everyone in the group happens to be really friendly and it was fun to feel really part of a group if only for a few hours.Champerico is an interesting place. It's definitely a tourist town, but decidedly geared to national tourists. The beach is covered in trash; the bungalows are run down; there are desperate-seeming people walking around all over selling cheap shell jewelry, shaved ice cones of questionable origin, and coconuts, ready to be cut open and given a straw. Horses run up and down the beach, mostly carrying a the few foreign tourists around, and for a buck you can get your picture taken with a plastic inflatable shark. And the bike rickshaws. I liked it. It had character.After the pool it was off to meet up with the big group for a late lunch, which reminded me that I definitely am not a seafood fan. Being vegetarian (or, here in Guatemala, "vegetarian"), this is always theoretically true, but in practice, different types of meat definitely evoke different physical reactions from me, generally in accordance with my exposure to them as a child. Most precisely I'm not a fan of seafood since it often requires bodily dismembering every last thing on the plate and in the bowl. (My parents can attest to that one in base of the famous lobster incident on Cape Cod as a kid, which was a precursory warning to my imminent vegetarianism). Perhaps the fact that the crab looks ready to crawl out of the bowl and off the plate makes it more delicious to some people. After lunch the men scrambled to get a few last beers in for the bus ride home, and given a lack of fixed leadership - it was more like leadership by druken male consensus - we rolled out of town about an hour after schedule, which meant we were going to get home well after dark. These few hours of excitement harkened back to the days of the "drunk bus" in college; the highlights including general, mind-numbing racket; the head of police threateningly propositioning my officemate who was sitting next to me, before a municipal plumber who I think is an absolute dreamboat stepped in to tell him to buzz off; several passionate conversations between men in Mam that sounded a lot like "hey, I love you man." "Naww, I love YOU man. You're the best." "Nawwww, YOU'RE the best."; and at least two men openly bawling their eyes out on the shoulder of the guy next to them. It wasn't pretty. This has given me some whole new theories about emotional repression. Meanwhile the women sat there ignoring it, tolerating it silently. But nevertheless, it was a memorable day, and a worthwhile day of cultural reflection, to say the least. I was exhausted and part of me would have loved to have slept in, caught up on work, and Google-chatted with my boyfriend all day. But in the end I wouldn't have remembered such a day at all, and this one I definitely will.

It's been awhile since my last post: four solid weeks of thinking, hanging out with locals, teaching English, snuggling Oliver, and funnest of all, pimping the deformed love-child of my and my counterpart's ideas of community tourism. I realize that in my quest to keep my posts mostly theme-centered and emotionally interesting, I've barely talked about work. In my first five months here work was very slow, but these past two months have been genuinely busy, and time has been going a lot more quickly. At times I regret all those "wasted" days - especially now having days in which I could use 72 hours instead of 24 - but when I really look back on it, there was not too much else I could have done. The slowness of work was in many ways directly related to the culture here and the amount of trust people had in me, which simply took time to build. Now I do more or less have that trust, which feels great, but it hardly seems professional to take so long before getting down to doing anything. At any rate, at a friend's request, I thought I'd finally get down to describing my work and projects here. My general project is community tourism, perhaps one of the most flexible and funnest Peace Corps projects (especially if you are working at a site which actually has tourism!) We can work on everything from good business practices to hospitality to signs to guide trainings to trash management to womens' artesania cooperatives to marketing and publicity to English classes to environmental education to trailwork and infrastructure to environmental interpretation... yada yada. We work with community associations, municipalities, schools, and whoever else we can. The frustration can come in when you're at a site with questionable tourism potential. I am the first tourism volunteer in my site, where there is currently no tourism. It can be rather discouraging, since maybe half to one-third of PCV tourism sites "make it big," and in the others 1-3 volunteers invest two years of their lives each for a project that goes nowhere, I'm sure good things will come of my time here, but it may have nothing to do with actual tourism.

That said, there certainly is potential here. My site is near a major tourist hub as well as another major regional tourist attraction, and we have some gorgeous forests full of Mayan altars and views of volcanoes, completely undeveloped hot springs (although with very difficult access), and other gems most local people probably don't want outsiders knowing about. They have already began constructing a recreation center in the woods with an event space, playground, sports field, etc. The spot is far enough away, though, that attracting outside tourists, even nationals, is going to require some real work. A regional market is much more likely, which is fine because there is a large one nearby, but I do not think that is what my counterpart and the mayor are hoping for the park.

Getting things going has been tough. Money's run out for the recreation center. The average townsperson doesn't really get the idea of tourism and feels ambivalent about devoting any time or energy to the idea. My counterpart, head of the municipal environmental office, is quite enthusiastic about tourism but completely scattered and in charge of about a hundred other things. (Managing six park guards and two office employees, representing our muni to GOs and NGOs, influencing municipal environmental regulations, trash management, reforestation, control of natural resources in the protected areas..) My primary goals for my time here are to leave behind a strategic tourism and business plan, a basically finished recreation center with signs and a completed environmental interpretation trail, which is well-managed and regulated, a group of people who can do environmental interpretation for groups that visit, and to have done solid promotion with local and regional schools and churches. A dream would be to get a tourism commitee up and going. It would also be nice to unite the womens' artesania groups a little more and accomplish some stuff with trash management; I'd like carry out a successful eco-ladrillo campaign with schools (which we could use at the recreation center!), clean up the main rivers in town, and motivate the muni to fix the mess that is the municipal trash dump. And convince everyone they needn't go putting zip-lines all over the freaking place. Oh plus my thesis on the water springs (which I think could have a community ed component)! I also have a total dream of putting together a video with oral histories from older people, about their lives and their perspectives on the environment, to use with high school students. Piece of cake.... At the moment these goals seem reasonable but we will have to see. I am about a third through my Peace Corps service and haven't done much so far! Right now without funding to finish the training center construction stuff has been going slow with primary goals; but slowly but surely I've been finishing a market survey with local folks about the recreation center (we did 200 surveys and it's now just the analysis), a summer course in English for teachers (with about 25-30 participants), and meeting with womens' artesania groups to get to know their abilities and guage interest for an English-tourism hospitality class. (This all with the idea that unifying them may eventually be essential if tourism takes off here.)

This month we'll also go out to the springs to get an idea what the monitoring program will entail. I also am currently in charge of training our new environmental educator by this next school year and writing our office's environmental education and tourism plans for 2011 with her .

So. Life is a little all over the place. But it's definitely not boring. And I go home for Christmas one month from today exactly! So excited!

After a request from a dear penpal, I'm working on post on about my project work, goals, and reflections. I realize I write very little about work - these first six months have been way more about adapting and integrating and just living - but I think six months in is a good time to write such a post - it's just going to take a little thinking and pruning before I release it off onto the web.

In the meanwhile I realized I haven't mentioned much about a major life change, my new kitten, Oliver! My whole host family knows I like cats, and that I'd been feeling down about Mishi since he took off. One day about three weeks ago my 5-year-old twin host cousins came back from their grandma's house, knocked on my window, and announced that they had a "regalo" for me.

Typically this would be a total trick and they would just want an excuse to be let into my room in order to run around screaming and wreaking general chaos, so I ignored them. Yet after a little while my older host sister, too, knocked on the door, and so I answered. And there he was in a little box: a tiny kitten of maybe 8 weeks of age. Originally I wasn't going to get another pet if Mishi didn't come back; but with a motherless kitten on my hands, I was feeling kind of flexible.

At any rate, Oliver has been great. After an initial night of crying and hiding he's gotten used to the environment and seems content with eating, sleeping, digging in his improvised litter box, and tearing around the room chasing everything from my toilet paper roll to the cat toys my parents sent. And he's so tiny, my room is plenty big for the moment, which is great. (My little host brother calls him "Botz Mishi" which means "Small Mishi" in Mam... too cute.) I am hoping we will be together for the rest of my 18 months here, but at the same time just really enjoying the time we have here together now.

As for Mishi, I still think of him, but his fate is definitively out of my hands unless he comes back. And I feel okay about that, since I think that as a time-hardened callejero he had earned the right to come and go as he wanted.

Hmm... I am definitely headed for total cat lady status, aren't I, though? I'm pretty sure I've already secured my status with my host family in future volunteer stories as "the one who loved cats."

Something that I love about Guatemala is the extent to which people are still engrained with the land. I see this every day, but it's on market days that the prevalence of the local economy really shows; in one tiny space you can get an amazing variety of goods: vegetables, fruits, meats, eggs, fresh cheese, dried staples, spices, artisan wares, street foods, and other goods, the majority cultivated, crafted, or raised within the same department or municipality, or at least within Guatemala. And generally speaking, the people work incredibly hard to make the land as productive as it is. I was reflecting, walking home from the plaza today (eating a pineapple pastry which cost me about $0.40 cents), that taking for granted a twice-weekly year-round market, teeming with fresh cheap produce, is something I am going to miss a lot when I go back to New York and Michigan. I am going to miss being in a place where it is the norm to shop at an open-air market instead of an air-conditioned store where the average product inside has traveled more than 300 miles to get to its destination. There is just something about a market that makes me feel inherently more alive and engaged in the process of feeding myself. It's not just the market, either. You can't go on a walk in our forest without someone plucking a bunch of hierba to boil up, or leaves to use in cooking, or some plant for medicine or to jazz up their food. My host mom was once talking about how she didn't know what to make for dinner, and my 8-year-old host cousin overheard. “I'll go get some hierba (greens) on the mountain,” he said. And he did. Just like that. Most people here know where food comes from, and from a young age, too. Today my host mom invited me to have lunch with the family because they were going to slaughter a chicken. (They know how we "vegetarians" love meat!) My host sister and I ended up depluming and butchering up the poor lady while my four-year-old host brother looked on nonchalantly. After lunch I sat in a circle with the women, them chatting in Mam, me straining to catch words I knew, as we scraped corn off the husk by hand to make sweet corn tamales for dinner. As we worked my host grandfather and little host sister brought us fresh cobs from the field; it struck me how remarkable it is that these are all still totally normal, everyday tasks here for an average middle-class family in my town. You find plenty of signs of the disconnected-from-everything global consumer economy here too, though. In any Guatemalan market or plaza you can find an amazing array of cheap throw-away goods from China. Out of habit, most people get everything in a brand new plastic bag. People are just as likely to buy a pill as use a natural remedy. Seeing all of this, I wonder sometimes if it is inevitable with greater people having greater economic security that fast convenience will over-take traditional ways of doing things - leaving the slower methods for special occasions, holidays, and stories for grandkids.

Based on my experience so far, I would argue it's a natural human instinct to seek greater convenience to the extent it's within our economic means, and you can't judge people for it; we all look for ways to make life easier, which is a fundamental driver of cultural evolution. Yet at the same time, personal taste, familiarity, and culture pride have a lot to do with it, too. Based on what I know of my town's cultural tenacity, I'm inclined to say that even if everyone in my town became rich, I wouldn't expect them to abolish the market and throw up a Wal-Mart the next day or anything. But I suppose we will have to see!

Aside from market day, I have another joy to report on: my new kitten, Oliver. After Mishi left three weeks ago, I was not planning to adopt another cat – but sometimes life has other plans for us. I'll post another entry soon about how he came on the scene and the wonders he is affecting in my life! :-)

This post goes out to my Grandma Marge. It is hard being apart, but the daily lesson of "appreciate the small stuff" is never lost on me, and there is lots of joy in the Peace Corps experience that I want to share with her.

Food is definitely a joyful part of life - whether for the novelty, simple satisfaction of hunger, or the sheer taste of something delicious. Something Grams always likes to ask me is, "What's the food like there?", so in the spirit of celebrating the small stuff, and answering her question, I've thrown together some pictures.

This was an on-the-spot idea, so the dishes are mostly from special occasions when I thought to take pictures and not really representative of what local folks typically eat nor what I typically eat - notably missing are eggs (scrambled or fried), boiled potatoes, and boiled herbs. But you'll get a general idea!

Local Food

Potato paches with white bread and a hot pineapple drink! Paches are typically served for birthdays (like on the above occasion) or other special events such as good-bye or welcome parties. Paches always have a big chunk of chicken inside, typically slaughtered that day.

Churrasco (steak), refried beans, rice, green onion, and tamalito (boiled corn dough wrapped in a leaf). Refried beans and rice are a staple in my diet, as are tamalitos, which my family makes every day. To avoid offense, I will make a good-faith effort to eat churrasco when it's given to me at events, but I still consider myself vegetarian. (That will be another post for another day!)

These are chuchitos ("little dogs") made of blue corn dough with a filling of chicken and pepper sauce. Often served on the Sabbath.

This is a typical dish my family would make for lunch or dinner: pasta with tomato, onion, and chicken feet for flavoring. This is not one I have been adventurous enough to try!

It's the corn harvest, and so a few weeks ago we boiled corn-on-the-cob (elote) and had a wonderful snack with everyone from the muni (kind of like town hall). Being from central New York, I felt right at home.

Desperation Dinners

A desperation lunch made of my mish-mash leftovers: broccoli, chow mein noodles, pancake.

This is an amazing vegetable curry with whole grain rice. This is a beloved recipe I learned from a JICA (Japanese) volunteer in my site. We can get a great variety of vegetables on market day in my site: cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, carrot, and of course onion, tomato, potato, plus many others.

I've been battling a sinus infection all this weekend, and happened to have half a pineapple left, so it occurred to me that would be a great lunch yesterday. There is tons of tropical fruit available here from Guatemala's coastal plantations. I also had a little brown rice left over and figured some whole grain couldn't hurt, either.

Special Occasions

Lasagna is a favorite of my host dad's from when he was an immigrant in the United States, and the family asked if we could make it sometime. We went all out with real mozzarella and ricotta cheese from Xela. It was reallly good.

I love love love macaroni and cheese, because it is one of my mom's special home-made dishes. She always serves it with apple sauce and some sort of green veggie, so when apple season came around, I invited my host family to make mac and cheese and fresh apple sauce together. Delicious!

There are several birthday cake shops in my town. It was admittedly nice to have a US-style cake on my birthday! (At a cost of about $9.)

Apple crisp! (Well, sort of, it kind of ended up more like apple cake. But it was delicious, and it got the stamp of approval from my little host siblings!) I try not to bake too much, though, 'cause it drains the gas tank like crazy.

And finally, a very special treat - this is my favorite dish from a great Indian restaurant in Xela! I didn't expect to find Indian food in Guatemala, but Xela is quite cosmopolitan when you get down to it, to the luck of Peace Corps volunteers, tourists, and adventurously-palated people everywhere. It's a great change-up after weeks of the same food in site.

I count myself lucky to live in such a place of abundance, keeping in mind that there are many who are not able to take full advantage of that abundance as I am. Gotta be thankful for each meal!

This weekend I went to visit a friend from my training town to see her site and help her give an environmental education workshop to the teachers of her community. Of all the 16 (?) of us from our training group, Tara's and my communities are physically closest as the crow flies – about 20 km - despite this, to get between the two the standard method is a 100-or-so km, 3-hour tour in bus or pick-up on established roads. If you were accustomed to the terrain, you could probably get between the two in a half day's walk. In terms of characteristics, however, the communities could practically be on different sides of the country.

My indigenous agrarian community of several thousand is somewhat dry and temperate trending to cold; Tara's ladino agrarian community of a few hundred people is quite humid and temperate trending to hot. Tara's got jungle, tropical diseases, and tarantulas; we've got temperate deciduous and coniferous forest, and I think I once saw a spider that was about the size of a nickel. Her closest market is about an hour away, there is only one bus a day out of town and one back in; in comparison, within my town I can get almost everything I reasonably need, and I can hop a micro every 30 or so minutes, to arrive in under an hour at the nearest big city where I can find some store carrying almost whatever I could want. In a quick daytrip – fairly standard for many volunteers in my region - I can even choose to shop at Hiper-Paiz - the local Wal-Mart branch - or any number of other chain stores in the local mall. (Not that I have the urge much.) This is all just to say that Guatemala is a country of unbelievable diversity, which makes the Peace Corps experience quite diverse as well. For me, this weekend was an interesting time to be thrust in a completely different environment, resulting in some hard personal reflection in a short amount of time. I had a great time: we drank the cooperative's delicious coffee (and I never enjoy drinking coffee!), feasted on the food Tara valiantly trekked home from town, watched her community win in the local soccer finals, hashed and re-hashed our experiences and reflections, and took in the humid air (which reminded me of summer at home in New York), expansive views of jungle and plantation, and peaceful sense of isolation. I also hung out in a hammock reading while the afternoon rains pounded down, which has made me realize I would like a hammock. Oh yeah, and we worked a little bit, too! Something I am beginning to come to terms with is my initial disappointment to be assigned to a larger town, with few physical challenges, close to a large city. Through my visit to Tara's site I had time to process and to put to words the idea that it is in a small isolated community that I feel most energized, where I naturally recharge myself, where I feel I can work most effectively. Tara on the other hand really craves the city life sometimes. So I think we came to the conclusion that sometimes by nature people can work best, especially under stress, in one particular environment over another, and perhaps Peace Corps ought to assess this a little more rigorously. We are encouraged during training to have a “I'll take anything” mentality going into site assignment, but I am not convinced that is the right strategy for a development organization in a country with so much variation between potential sites. We should be encouraged to assess and be assessed for our deal-breakers more rigorously – to admit that some of us have true deal-breakers. There should be more detailed volunteer input and analysis of volunteer personality and potential sites than asking us "hot or cold?" "big or small?" "are you extroverted or introverted?" (those words can have different meanings for people anyway!). This would require a lot more time and work on the part of staff, but Peace Corps might save some money and volunteers a good chunk of their time that way, by producing better technical results and reducing to an extent early terminations and site changes. At the end of the day, you have to just live it to know how it will be and how you will react, but I see room for improvement in the assignment process.

But now I've been nearly six months in my community; I've got my little garden planted. What use is it at this point to want to abandon it for another? It seems to me, that garden could be a lot more productive under different circumstances - but it's my fault for going into my site interview with a "I'll be happiest anywhere" mentality in the first place. As a professional I also have to see that with the resources expended to plant that first one, and with potential for an adequate yield, I really have to take my losses and get over it. I have friends, work, and many positive things to look forward to in my community.

Perhaps this is the prime lesson Peace Corps can offer us as a personal growth experience, of taking what we have in every moment for what it is and not wishing it were something else. Just easier said than done. Which is why, I suppose, you just gotta do it. On that note, off to bed, tomorrow we have a solid day up ahead with a school visit and the tourism diagnostic in some rural communities.

Thanks to Tara for a great weekend!

This week we celebrated Guatemala's independence from Spain in 1821. This meant that for the past 1-2 weeks nearly every schoolchild in Guatemala devoted him or herself exclusively to drum core and gymnastics practice, pageant preparations, and making quetzal birds and ceiba trees out of tissue paper and cardstock. Here in my region, it also means the Feria de Independencia in the city of Xela, the highlights of which are a big 4-hour parade of high school marching bands and an enormous fair with carnival rides, food, and vendors. On Tuesday, we the employees of the muni cooked and ate a huge pot of corn-on-the-cob on an open fire on the roof of the muni (remind me to write about that sometime). That was more to celebrate the start of the corn harvest more than independence, but it was awesome. I love corn-on-the-cob! Aside from that nothing really special happened with the muni this week. They did give us the holiday off and also hung some obligatory plastic flag-banners and strings of balloons, which disappointedly deflated within 12 hours. Within the schools there were some interesting events, however. Many Peace Corps Guatemala bloggers note the school pageant festivities one encounters this time of year, and I was no less impressed when we had the fortune to stumble upon one, foolishly having planned to do the tourism diagnostic with a group of school teachers this week. In summary, you haven't lived until you see a bunch of 4-11 year-olds from a remote aldea where the average adult can barely write and the school doesn't have running water shimmy and sway their hips around in prom hairdos and pristine evening wear, the type of absurd adult-dress one buys their daughter in the US only to be a flower girl or perhaps be Bat Mitzvahed or have their quincenera. It goes to show a lot about priorities. But to each their own. I was also highly amused by the question-answer period, in which they asked the 4-year-old contestant, “Name some of the patriotic symbols of our country.” Brutal! She probably barely even speaks Spanish. But glad we're emphasizing brains and beauty equally (right). As for my priorities, since nothing much was going on here in town on the “mero dia” I went into Xela to meet up with a friend's family, see the parade and fish for something different to do. We ended up watching a bit of the parade and then going to this amazing Italian restaurant, Cardinelli's, on 14th Avenue near Parque Central, for 4-cheese pizza and white wine! It was great, I hadn't had wine or good cheese in quite some time. My taste buds were going wild. The restaurant is a little expensive but they import all of their ingredients from Italy, excepting vegetables of course. I felt a little guilty eating so ridiculously well to celebrate the supposed independence day when so many people in Guatemala would never think of dropping so much on a meal ($12 per person), and in reality, Guatemala is far from independent in the sense of everything we like to associate with that word. (That will be a whole other post for another day.) But man, the food was delicious! And we all need a good excuse to celebrate now and again, even though just what exactly we're celebrating might be slightly vague. And I can't really feel too bad about supporting independent, creative cuisine with amazing service. We finished the evening off with a viewing of Back to the Future. I barely watch TV or movies these days, but at times it is really nice to watch stuff that reminds me of home - “comfort TV” I guess you could call it. I must have watched that movie no less than 50 times as a kid! Overall the day was a pretty great mish-mash of celebration and rest. And Saturday I'm headed off to a friend's community to help out with an environmental education workshop, so it was nice to have a little mini-weekend before the big trip. So all-in-all it has been an interesting week, a time of that celebration and break from routine that I think every human being secretly craves and cherishes. Or, at least I know I do, even if it is an unfamiliar celebration in an unfamiliar place! And we did actually manage a tiny bit of work, too, but more on that later.

What to report of late? It's interesting, but in these past two weeks since my vacation I am really getting back into the “life here is so worthwhile” and I dare say, on occasion, “I love it here!” frame of mind, which is great. It is so interesting to note my own mood swings and the “rollercoaster” of emotion as my good friend from my training town commented on her blog. It is fascinating to me how we humans are able to adapt ourselves to different situations, and the processes we go through during that adaptation - how different my feelings can be from week to week and day to day.

Things are looking up primarily for the fact that the new environmental educator has started in my office, and coincidentally a whole pile of potential work and collaborations have started showing up. My counterpart also recently suggested monthly planning meetings - which I have mentioned a few times and have been fantasizing about for months - and I am really psyched. In this month's planning meeting we already planned October's planning meeting. I am sure it will actually happen, too, +/-7 days from its scheduled date. Amazing! My philosophy in these past nearly six months has been that for sustainability's sake there is only so much you can exert yourself if local counterparts don't take initiative. So when they do, it is a real eureka moment! It just requires a lot of patience... perhaps 24 months of patience...

In the months before summer vacation sets in we're primarily doing a survey on local opinions about tourism, as well as some activities with local schools and young people, including promoting the park and recreation center as a good location for the sixth-graders' farewell party. I feel good about this work. It's important in my view to make the community aspect of “community tourism” actually happen, and not leave it as a half-baked idea. (Of which there are unfortunately many in my municipality and in my office, specifically.) We also are starting a project with local Mayan priests to name and “label” the 20-something altars in the protected areas of the muni with wood signs, assuming the priests give it the OK. I am thinking this collaboration could lead to some cool projects later on, too. Not to mention everything else we'd like to do in November and December...

So at this point we have a ton of work to do and it constantly feels like herding cats. Or at times, juggling them. Efficiency is a whole other concept here and keeping track of all the loose ends requires a lot of organization and patience. I am kind of hoping I don't adapt too much – could make reverse-adaptation to the US work-world a real shock!

A recent downturn of events is that Mishi has gone on the lamb, presumably in hunt of a nice sexy lady friend, or several nice sexy lady friends. He took off three days ago, disappointingly the day before I got a package of toys and catnip for him from my parents. (Heaven help my future children from the spoiling they are going to get!) The package is a whole other cultural commentary for another day...

The downturn is mostly because he had been acting out-of-character and aggressive lately, and gave me a good bite or two in the last two weeks. Per standard protocol I had been keeping an eye on him since the last bite to be sure the aggression was behavioral and not medical (rabies, for instance) – but since he took off, you can't say for sure. So, rabies prophylaxis it is; I get the final shot on Monday. I really doubt he had rabies, but nevertheless, the idea scares the hell out of me, so I called in. The Peace Corps Medical Officer was really understanding on the phone, although clearly not too excited I'd adopted a quasi-feral street cat. Fair enough.

But you had to know him. What a great cat. I hope he comes home.

At the basis of many a Guatemalan adventure in food is the phenomenon of being “tortillar-ed”. Not to be confused with the action of “tortillar” in the sense: “The masa was tortillared into tortillas,” “tortillar-ed” refers to the rather passive phenomenon of being offered significant quantities of food no less than three times between your house and your final destination (generally involving significant quantities of tortillas, as implied by the verb). And here in Guatemala, being offered food is as good as eating it, so more appropriately, to be tortillar-ed implies being force-fed a large quantity of food within a short time via the Guatemalan ethic of hospitality and sharing. I do not have to preoccupy myself much about being tortillar-ed. There are other things that occupy the prime worrying slots: the well-being of my wandering street cat in a land of rabies, vicious dogs, apathetic people, and assorted diseases; making friends and fitting in; trying to understand what people really mean to say or not say; avoiding spending more than 10% of my week in church; pick-pockets on the bus; attempting work of some value; among others. Now and again, however, I am tortillar-ed. And I mean hard. Here I would be referring to my experience with one of the most popular typical foods of this region of Guatemala: paches. Paches are a mushy porridge of starch (either rice or potato) with a pepper sauce and large chunk of chicken in the center (bone optional) wrapped in a big green leaf and then boiled. They're good-sized and inevitably the meal of choice at every special event in my town (goodbye parties, birthdays, lo que sea), served on a styrofoam tray with two slices of Wonder-bread style white bread, which no one here eats under any other circumstances whatsoever. (I'm still trying to wrap my head around this particular tradition.) In some towns of this region the folks with economic means to do so make them every Saturday, although I assume they forgo the styrofoam tray and probably even the white bread- I get the sense that's a special touch for events. Paches de papa (potato), served with white bread and a warm pineapple drink.

While I inevitably feel wonderful about being included in whatever special event warrants the paches - even if most of the conversation is in Mam and I'm left nodding and smiling - I have very divergent opinions about them depending on what they're made of. I'm always fairly anti-white bread and anti-styrofoam, but aside from that... Paches of potato are delicious. I could eat maybe 3 or 4 of them in one sitting. To me they taste something like curry. Whenever I eat them I always finish feeling more connected to my local community members and somehow happier to be alive. Definitely my favorite local tipico food. End of story. Paches of rice are bad news. About five bites into my first one I'm remembering how awful they are and my stomach begins to feel as though it is full of sawdust. Nevertheless you have to smile and act extremely excited, because paches of rice are many people's very favorite food here, associated with happy memories of community and family and celebration. It is common to give two paches here, as a type of snack or small meal, and typically I can manage one paches of rice just fine, and fake my way through the second. The striking beauty of paches is that they come wrapped in a huge leaf, so if you're sneaky, you can actually give the impression you've eaten everything, even when you feel another bite would possibly cause you to explode. I don't mean to come off as ungrateful or wasteful of food, and anyone who knows me knows I almost religiously subscribe to the clean-plate club. But man, you have to be there. There is only so much flavorless twice-boiled rice one can fit inside oneself. You get to be pretty thankful for that leaf. The worst was when I was invited to the birthday lunch for the 1-year-old daughter of the coordinador of the Office of Municipal Planning. It was actually also the best, because the coordinador invited everyone from the muni a week ahead of time with printed, hand-addressed invitations, made a special arrangement with a local microbus driver to take us all to his aldea, paid for all our bus fares, was clearly so proud to present lunch to all of us in honor of his baby girl. It was really touching to be part of, if kind of comical. All of the characters from the muni traipsing out to this party was undeniably a bit reminiscent of an episode of The Office - if The Office were titled “The Muni” and 95% of the dialogue was in Mam. At any rate: THREE PACHES for each person! Wow. It was incredible. The family pride was palpable; they certainly must have spent a fair chunk of change to make three paches for something like 40 people (as well as buying THREE professional cakes). I ended up taking my third paches away in a little plastic bag, as is socially acceptable here, since I couldn't even fake that I had touched it. No aguanté, pues. It's so weird, too. I usually can eat so much, and even immediately following the two paches I ate an enormous slice of cake. But another rice paches, no. They're my kryptonite.

After almost 70 hours of lessons in Mam with a friend here in site, I'm going to relate the diagnosis that learning a Mayan language is not that easy. First, you have the issue of distinguishing the sounds: k', k, ky', ky, q', q, j all tend to lend themselves to beautiful confusion. Was that kyaq' (caliente/rojo)? Or wait, was it ky'aq (flea)? Or wait, maybe it was kya'j (cielo)? The incredible thing being that native speakers don't just divine the meaning based on context (as in the English where/wear), they really differentiate the pronunciation of sounds that to my ear sound almost identical. Don't even get me started on tx' and ch', nor their cousins ch, tx, x, and x with dieresis...

Then there is the issuing of producing the sounds. Oh man, is that something else entirely. I'm getting better, although without constant practice I slip back and forget the difference between sounds. There's no better way to test how I'm doing than to try to speak with the kids in the family, especially 3-year-old Rene, who doesn't speak much Spanish (see the post "Que es eso?") Tonight the two of us were hanging out in the kitchen together sharing the dinner I'd made. Somehow we always manage to communicate via our rudimentary modified Spanish, but I decided to throw a little Mam in the mix and ask for the name of things around the kitchen. My efforts sort of failed, with good reason (I realized later I was asking him "What's your name?" rather than "What do you call this?"), but my efforts did inspire Renecito to start giving me random words to try to pronounce. He found this game HIGHLY entertaining and later reported to his mom how wonderful it was that I pronounced the word for "dish" with "j" instead of "q". What kind of idiot do we have living with us, anyway, Mom?

Finally I finished the conversation by saying, "Ma chin wane" (I just ate), to which Renecito responded in an exasperated tone, "Nqowane" (We're eating!) Pretty funny. And awesome to understand a word, to have insight into what Renecito is thinking, in his own language!

So, progress is definitely slow, since I am often way too lazy and tired from my primary "work" to study as much as I could, but I get encouragement in every smile and even every scoff when I offer up to people in a tienda "chjonte" (thanks), or to those I pass on the street, "wiya" (bye) or "chab'aya" or "chab'aqeye" (little by little, roughly like "take it easy"), or "mmm" to the ancianitos (a greeting of respect).

Whether people seem to react positively or not, I think even minuscule efforts to speak Mam do make a difference to people. The point really hit home for me with the thunderous round of applause I got after giving a talk on indigenous rights and mining to a group of young leaders, closing with "chjonte tun amb'il y chjonte tun nak'b'il" (thanks for the time and thanks for your attention). Such moments make me feel great and really encourage me to work to be able to speak and understand the basics.

Then there is the fact that I am learning this language through Spanish. Did I dream myself capable of this a year ago? Not really, to be honest. But that is one of the truly cool things about Peace Corps, the chance to break those limits you thought you had, chab'aku (little by little).

Today I made apple sauce. It was the amazing inauguration of what I am planning to turn into a month-long Applefest celebration. What is Applefest, one might ask? My last two years of college I lived in the Loj - a cozy house with 10 other gals on the main drag in town - where each fall the housemates got together one Saturday around the apple harvest and invited the community to eat an enormous array of dishes involving apples - "Applefest".

There's just something about eating in local season that makes me happy, and for me, the apple is kind of my quintessential local food. Born and raised and educated in New York, I always associated apples, and their various products, with home and fall and friends and well-being and other emotions that seem too complicated to explain in words. Indeed, I would even go far enough to say that my emotional relationship with apples in a sense could be equated to the Guatemalan relationship with corn.

So I honestly found it vaguely disorienting to walk past the plaza one morning and see the vendors with enormous piles of local, blemished, worm-ridden, delicious apples, looking like they were right off the tree in my grandpa's backyard. 3Q/lb. I mean, of course we have apples here. We have potatoes in spades, why not colder-climate fruit, too? There's an apple tree in my friend's yard. I just hadn't realized I'd see this food that reminds so distinctly and emotionally of home in a place that feels so physically and emotionally and culturally distinct from New York - a place where the leaves aren't changing and we shouldn't hold our breath for snow. So it took me a week or two to wrap my head around it and buy some cinnamon, but then I did. Apples? Why yes I will, thank you.

It's amazing how strongly smell evokes memory. Preparing the apple sauce sent me back instantly to apples past: picking apples with Mom to make apple crisp, cider with friends after a geology field trip, cooking for Apple fest until late at night, window-shopping the bazillions of varieties at the local farmer's market in my college town in Central New York, picking apples with my boyfriend in the rain in Upper Michigan, making apple sauce for my pop-pop, bringing apple crisp with maple syrup and fresh whipped cream through the snow to a potluck...

The apples I picked up are more cider apples and not really cooking apples, but I'm not going to complain, and I don't think anyone else is either. My host sister even gave some apple sauce to her baby, who is just starting on solid foods, and he loved it. Now the only thing to get is some maple syrup!

On another note, time seems to be flying the past week and when I look ahead I only see appointments, social engagements, pending research, housekeeping and personal to-do lists, and work commitments whizzing past me. This is great. For the moment, being busy keeps me happy, and suddenly I am getting solid ideas of things to do and imagining attempting real work here. And at least I will have some comfort food to accompany me in these next weeks before the apples finish!