An Uninvited Guest...

I knew I’d be bad at this whole blogging thing… however I must admit that there isn’t that much interesting stuff to talk about during training.  This past weekend was really nice.  On Friday, I invited my sobrinos Rony (14) and Jonatón (5) to help me bake peanut butter cookies.  After I made them thoroughly wash their hands, I told them the measurements, and let them do all the work.  We only had a cake pan to bake them on, so we had to make about seven batches of four cookies at a time.  Even though the oven wouldn’t really get hot enough, the cookies turned out great!  Peanut butter cookies don’t really exist here, but the new taste was very well received.  Also, while the cookies were baking, I pulled out my computer, and my nephews got a chance to talk to my dad on skype.  Rony is learning a new song in English class, and he sang it to my dad.  It was really cute.

On Saturday, the whole training group went to a traditional Mayan religious ceremony at the ruins of Iximche, in the department of Chimaltenango.  Interestingly enough, I participated in the same ceremony when I was here in 2008.  Nevertheless, it was very interesting, and I understood much more of it because my Spanish is much better now than it was back then.  We then had some time to explore the ruins, which was really nice because we don’t get much time to socialize with the trainees in the other training program (there are 15 in my youth development group and 37 in the healthy homes group).  We drove home through a torrential rain storm, and then I stayed in the rest of the evening because I’ve been sick on and off for three weeks, and I was feeling kinda gross.

 A Couple Scenes from the Mayan Ceremony at Iximche

Sunday was a lazy day.  Most of my family went to the coast to pick mangoes, and my host mom and I had the day together.  After breakfast we washed dishes together for almost an hour, and then she taught me how to do my laundry!  It was definitely one of those moments where I felt like a complete gringa.  I was trying to conserve water, but clearly that wasn't the goal.  Once I figured that out, I was on a roll and I really enjoyed being able to do it myself.  I still didn’t feel well all day Sunday, and didn’t really eat anything.

Yesterday (Monday), I woke up to find that I was really sick, and super dizzy because I haven’t eaten much for the past couple of weeks.  I spoke with the Peace Corps office, and decided that I’d lay low for the day, and wait to see the doctor on Tuesday, since I go to the office on Tuesdays anyway.  I went into the office today, and although we don’t yet know exactly what I have, it seems like it’s some sort of parasite.  The Guatemalan parasite diet has resulted in me losing ten pounds in the past three weeks.  The good news is that, to gain the weight back, I plan on eating a bunch of ice cream when I’m feeling better.

On Monday I leave for a week of field-based training (FBT), and after that I only have five weeks of training left!  It’s amazing how time flies during training.  That’s all I have to report for now, but I’ll try to post again before I leave for FBT.

Harder to Breathe...

This morning I woke up, put on my loose-fitting yoga pants and a t-shirt, grabbed my trusty pepper spray, and went on my first run in almost a month.  At 7,500 feet.  My run lasted twenty minutes and I was drenched in sweat by the end.  I figure the altitude training will be great, though.  When I get back to the states running will (hopefully) be a whole lot easier.

I'm really glad that I waited a while before running in my community.  I'm now well aware of where it is safe to run, and even which dogs to watch out for.  More importantly, I'm starting to recognize many of the people in the town, to whom I say good morning, good afternoon, and good evening countless times every day.  I even made a concerted effort, during my run, to say “buenos días" to each and every person I passed, no matter how out of breath I was.  I think this was the key to my successful - and uneventful - run.  I didn’t get any weird looks from anyone, and the older Mayan women, whom I had feared would give me dirty or disapproving looks, returned my “buenos días" with smiles on their faces.

The Peace Corps Volunteer I met on Monday told me about a super hilly (think mountains) 15K race in her town in September.  Hopefully I can train up for a race in Guatemala!

First School Visit

Yesterday we went to a NUFED (Núcleo Familiar Educativo para el Desarrollo) in Santo Domingo Xenacoj.  A NUFED is a type of middle school that focuses on more than just academics.  These schools teach life skills and vocational skills that will help students to succeed in their home communities.  Each class has an agricultural project that they work on, so that they can gain experience in farming and/or animal husbandry.  At this school, the primario (6th grade) students are raising rabbits, the segundo (7th grade) are raising chickens, and the tercero (8th grade) are raising and harvesting mushrooms.  This type of school is really amazing.  The kids have opportunities that aren't offered in most of the other Guatemalan public schools.

When we arrived, we spent some time with the kids, just talking about their school and their community.  The kids were setting up for a disco (dance), and they asked us what kinds of dances we know.  About 8 of us proceeded to show them the electric slide.  I wish I had a video of it, it was pretty hilarious.  Then they showed us some marimba, which is the national dance of Guatemala.  After that, they asked us to sing our national anthem for them.  We could not hold a tune, it was pretty pitiful.  They then proceeded to blow us out of the water with their rendition of the Guatemalan national anthem.

 Lunch in the Park in Xenacoj

All in all, it was a really fun afternoon, and it made me even more excited to get into the schools and get working.  The kids were really receptive and respectful, which made it very easy for us to talk and play with them.

I'm home sick today... I've had a nasty stomach ailment since Tuesday, and the Peace Corps Medical Office told me I'm not allowed to go to Spanish class today.  Tomorrow, we have our first afternoon off, and the plan is to explore Antigua a little, so hopefully I'll start to feel better before then.

Guatemala Top Ten (in no particular order):

• Beached whale at the piscina

• Linnea using the skin off her fried chicken as a tortilla

• Babies on motorcycles

• Futbol con mis sobrinos

• My fourteen-year-old nephew driving a bus

• Daily walks through the campo

• Being briefed on how to handle a shooting on a bus, which, as it turns out, was relevant information

• “You’re gringos, you’re expected to be weird”

• Chicken caesar salad wrap at Miraflores

• The woman nursing her child while harvesting veggies in the campo

(feel free to post any follow-up questions, and I’ll try to answer them)

Feeling More at Home

One of these days, I’m gonna catch up and post things that aren’t almost a week old…  Anyway, last Thursday night was wonderful.  My madre and I spoke quite a bit, and I was able to tell her a lot about my life back in the states.  She told me about Mayan culture, and even taught me a couple of words of Kaqchikel, the local language.  I sat at the dinner table for almost two hours, just talking with my madre, and later on with my sobrinos.

On Saturday, the four of us spent the morning in San Lucas doing some shopping at the market and the supermarket.  We returned home around noon to eat lunch.  After lunch, Linnea and I piled into the car with my host parents and headed off to Puerto San Jose, on Guatemala’s southern coast.  It turned out that my entire familia had gone down in one of the camionetas.  We arrived and went for a walk on the black sand beach.  It was beautiful, but super dirty.  We would later find out that Puerto San Jose isn't very nice and tends to be pretty dirty... oh well.  After our walk my madre took us to the pool.  We hopped in only to find that, while standing chest-deep in the water, we couldn’t even see down past our stomachs.  I can only begin to imagine how disgustingly dirty that water was…  Anyway, after about an hour of standing in the pool, we headed back to the hotel to eat some dinner.  After dinner, we went to the beach to sit and read until sunset.  It was beautiful.  Then we went to the hotel that the rest of my famila was staying at and played soccer with my sobrinos for a while.  I haven’t played in years, and I’d forgotten how much fun it is!  We got back to the hotel and cooled off with cold showers, but it was still so hot that I couldn’t stop sweating.  I definitely did not sleep well that night (this wasn’t the type of hotel that offers air conditioning…)

Sunday morning, I woke up around seven to find my madre and my hermanas cooking breakfast over a fire.  The Doña asked me if I like fish, and I responded yes, assuming that we’d be eating fish for lunch.  Linnea came out of the room just in time to sit down with me and see that, as a matter of fact, fish was on the breakfast menu: 

 Breakfast of Champions

I’m really learning how to go with the flow down here.  I was fully prepared to eat this thing for breakfast, along with a bowl of whatever the fish was cooked in.  I did, however, have to tell my madre that I didn’t know how to eat this fish without any utensils.  She showed me how to tear the meat off and avoid the bones.  Just as we were digging in, she brought over a large steak of a different kind of fish, and told us we could eat that instead.  I think we were both pretty relieved.  After we recovered from breakfast, we headed to the beach to swim in the ocean.  My madre was concerned about our ability to swim with the strong undertow, but we assured her that we wouldn’t go any deeper than our waists.  We spent the morning, from eight until noon, at the beach, in and out of the ocean.  It was really relaxing, and nice to get some sun.

 Enjoying the Beach in Puerto San Jose

It was also amusing.  We were the only white people to be found, and we got a lot of “I love you… I love you forever... Good afternoon!”  It was pretty hilarious.  My madre wasn’t feeling well, so my padre was left to figure out the eating situation…  Lunch consisted of a piece of fried chicken, black beans, and tortillas.  I’m not gonna lie, it was actually pretty good.  We headed home in the afternoon, so that we could spend some time at the Mother’s Day fiesta in the central square (Mother’s Day here is on May 10^th).

The days are finally starting to have some normalcy.  Last week, everything I did was a brand new experience, and somewhat interesting to write about.  Now I feel like I can just focus on some of the more special and exciting events.  Tuesday was Mother’s Day, and I gave my madre an olive shell necklace from Neah Bay.  I explained to her that it was a typical necklace from an indigenous group that I worked with in the US, and she thought it was pretty cool.

 I returned from my day at the Peace Corps office around 5:30 and found that a bunch of my nieces and nephews (I recently learned that I have 22 of them) were over for Mother’s Day.  I pulled out my playing cards and played go fish with five of them.  After that, we played an epic, 1½ hour game of crazy eights.  I’m really having a blast playing with these kids.  They’re all really nice and amazingly respectful.  After dinner, we celebrated Mother’s Day as a large group.  First we stood in a circle, held hands, and prayed together for about fifteen minutes, which was interesting, to say the least.  Then we had cake and hot chocolate (best hot chocolate ever!), and I got a chance to talk to one of my hermanos.  I got to practice my Spanish a ton, which was great.

Tuesday was also the day when my young nieces and nephews decided that they can come in my room if I’m in here.  This resulted in three of them getting to see me talking to my dad and Hannah on skype, and later, my three-year-old nephew got a chance to meet Christopher.

Today (Thursday) was normal, except we spent the afternoon in a different town with another training group.  We got to go to the house of another trainee, who happens to live on a huge farm.  We spent the afternoon studying the geography of Guatemala, which was helpful.  We then picked some fresh peaches to bring back to our host families.  I returned home and played hide and seek with my nephews for a while, until my hermana invited me to bathe with her in the temascal.  It was quite an experience.  It was a lot like a sauna, but we bathed in there too, which was nice because dumping water on myself helped to cool me down.  We sat in there for a long time and got a chance to talk a lot and get to know one another better.  I found out that her husband is living and working in Long Island right now, which is why her and her sons live with my host parents and I.  Just a week ago, I was really concerned about my ability to build a relationship with my new family.  Now I’m confidently able to talk with them about my life, even if it is with a very elementary level of Spanish.

Whew!  I’m finally caught up.

And So Begins the Rainy Season…

Apparently the seasons change rather quickly around here.  Today (May 4th... sorry for the delay) it was about 60 degrees and raining...  No, it was POURING.  But according to the Guatemalans, it wasn’t raining that hard.  I’ve yet to see what a real Guatemalan downpour looks like, but I’m sure it will be spectacular.  Anyway, it seems like, at least for the time being, I’ll only be able to post on my blog on Tuesdays, when I’m in the Peace Corps office.  The rest of the time, I can occasionally get on the internet on my kindle, but it tends to have trouble loading webpages most of the time.  I feel like I could write an entire blog post each day, so I guess I’ll just reflect on each day in this post.

Monday, 5/2:  Today went much better than the weekend.  I woke up at 6 and got ready for my first day of Spanish classes.  For the next month, I’ll have Spanish for six hours a day on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and four hours on Thursday and Saturday.  In my town, there are three other trainees with about the same level of Spanish proficiency as me.  The four of us will be spending a lot of time together over the next three months.  Luckily everyone is friendly and I think we’ll have a good time together.  The group is myself, Brady (now called Patricio), Linnea (now called Lily), and Elizabeth (still called Elizabeth).  Our teacher is named Marisa and she is awesome!  Our first day of classes went really well.  Marisa told us that, since we need to learn how to go to the supermarket, etc., she will go with us on the bus to San Lucas, the nearest big town, during our class time on Saturday.  Also, when she found out that my big 2-6 is in a couple of weeks, she said that we can celebrate by going to a Guatemalan cooking class!  We’re all really excited about it.

 It was a beautiful day, and after class got out at 3, the four of us took a walk through the campo (countryside).  There is a nice road that goes out of the village and by all the vegetable fields.  There are a ton of yummy vegetables growing out there.  If you’ve never walked by a field of cilantro, you’re missing out… it smells sooo good!  During the walk, I told the group about my lonely experience during the weekend, and they told me that, if it happens again, I can probably do things with their families too.  I was thankful for that, but I also wanted to be able to build a relationship with my family.  

 I returned home determined to spend some time with my host mom.  I went into the kitchen and told her that I wanted to help her prepare dinner, and she gave me some chopping to do.  I’m really glad that I took the initiative on that one, because we were able to talk a little bit and the experience left me feeling much better about my situation.

 After dinner, I did my homework (being in the Peace Corps is like being back in college, we have a ton of homework), and went to bed early, since the roosters, firecrackers, trucks, dogs, etc. usually tend to wake me up between 5:30 and 6.

 My Wonderful Training Group: Elizabeth, Brady, Me, and Linnea

Tuesday:  Today was our first common session at the Peace Corps offices in Santa Lucia.  Marisa met us at 7 to guide us through our first experience on the camionetas, or “chicken buses.”  We all need to learn how to get around on these because they are pretty much the only form of transportation that we, as volunteers, will be able to afford.  As a side note, my family owns four camionetas, which are the sole source of income for my host dad (I think).  Riding on a camioneta is quite a trip.  The buses are old school buses from the US that have been, in most cases “pimped out” with shiny rims and cool paint jobs.  People sit three or four (if there’s a kid that can be thrown on a lap) to a seat, plus the aisle is typically full of standees.  We have to take two separate camionetas to get to the Peace Corps office – one to San Lucas, and another to Santa Lucia.  After we got off the first bus, Marisa said that we were lucky, because the bus hadn’t been that full.  Funny, I thought it was full to capacity.  On the way home, I would see just how full a camioneta can be.  We arrived in Santa Lucia with enough time to socialize with the other trainees, which was nice because I’ve got some new friends who are living in pueblos pretty far from mine.

 The rest of the day was spent on various training activities.  At about 4:30, we left Santa Lucia for our return trip.  There must have been a hundred people on our first bus.  Somehow, I got a seat, however my butt was halfway off the edge, as was the man next to me, and any time anyone needed to get by, we both had to stand up and lean over our seat-mates.  It was quite an experience.  I got home around 5:15 and worked on homework until dinner.  While I was eating dinner, my host mom told me that she’s hoping to take Linnea and I to the beach this weekend!  We’re both super excited about that.  Apparently my host mom and Linnea’s are very close friends.  As long as everything works out, we’ll be heading off to Puerto San Jose on Saturday afternoon!

Wednesday:  I think today was one of the best days yet.  Even though it poured rain, and my Spanish class was relatively uneventful, I finally feel like I’m making some connections with my new family.  After dinner tonight, I was sitting at the table listening to my madre and my hermana (sister) talk.  I’ve started doing this because I’m trying to pick up Spanish any way I can.  My little sobrino (nephew) came in and said that he wanted to play with me.  My madre was in the middle of telling him that I don’t understand much Spanish, but I understood what she was saying, and chimed in to say that I’d love to play with him.  Anyway, we played together for about an hour and a half, and during that time I finally got a chance to see all the areas of the house that I wasn’t sure if I was allowed in or not.  I also got to talk to my three other sobrinos, Emerson, Jason, and Kevin (great names, huh?).  I’ve started taking notes and building somewhat of a family tree.  There are so many people around all the time that I can’t fully comprehend who exactly lives here, and which kids belong to which adults.  All in all, this rainy, miserable day turned out to be very satisfying.

A Religious Experience...

I just returned from my first experience in a Guatemalan Evangelical Church.  My ears are still ringing.  Yesterday, I moved in with my new host family.  I will live here for the next eleven weeks.  It turns out that my host father is the pastor at the local Evangelical Church, so I joined the family for the 2 ½  hour service.  When my host mother asked me what whether I’m Catholic or Evangelical, I answered “Soy Judeo.”  She didn’t know what that was, but asked if it was like being Evangelical.  I explained, in rather broken Spanish, that it’s like being Christian only without the New Testament (Close enough, right?).  She seemed content with that and didn’t ask any further questions.  I’m glad I didn’t have to explain that it was my people that crucified Jesus…

I’ll rewind a few days to my arrival in Guatemala.  We landed in Guate on Wednesday afternoon, after being awake for about forty hours.  We boarded buses for Santa Lucia Milpas Altas, where the Guatemalan Peace Corps offices are.  We immediately had our initial Spanish interviews so that we could be grouped up for training.  I was rated as “intermedio bajo,” and I only need to be “intermedio medio” to be sworn in three months from now, what a relief.  After a few hours of meetings, we were released to meet our temporary host families.  My new friend Gina and I were paired up and sent off to live with Doña Leticia.  Luckily Gina is fluent in Spanish because I would have been totally lost without her.  Doña Leti was incredibly nice, and an AMAZING cook.  She definitely spoiled Gina and I.  I quickly learned the proper etiquette for using a toilet that doesn’t flush (by pouring water into the bowl with a bucket), taking a bucket bath, and using the pila (like a big sink with no faucet).  It’s amazing how little water I can use during my daily activities!

Arrival In Guatemala!

Thursday and Friday were kind of a blur of Spanish classes and informational meetings.  I was able to spend some time with the other trainees and make some new friends.  In general, the other trainees are really nice and share a lot of my interests.  There are a number of people who, like me, are hoping to run here in Guatemala.  We found out that as long as we don’t do it alone, we’ll be able to run!  What a relief.  On Saturday morning, we received our Peace Corps-issued cell phones.  Guatemala is one of only five posts worldwide that gives cell phones to the volunteers.  Apparently it’s because Guatemala is also one of the “sketchiest” posts, and the Peace Corps wants to be able to contact us at a moment’s notice and vice-versa.  Whatever the reason, we were all stoked about our new phones. 

Saturday afternoon, I was dropped off at the home of my new host family, in a town not far from Santa Lucia Milpas Altas (e-mail me if you want the name… the Peace Corps doesn’t want us to post our locations for the public to see).  Suddenly, I was on my own.  I didn’t have Gina to help translate for me anymore, so I had to step up and figure out how to explain myself and hold a conversation with my “intermedio bajo” Spanish.  Although I often think that my host family is laughing at me, I feel like I’m holding my own pretty well.  I’m the fifteenth trainee that they’ve hosted, and they told me that they’ve had many with much less Spanish than me.

My new house has a flushing toilet and a hot shower, plus my room is large and has a locking metal door and a locking wooden chest.  I feel like I’m living the high life! It’s amazing how fast you put things in perspective around here.  I’ve already found a huge appreciation for so many of the things I took for granted in the US.

My New Digs!

On Sunday morning, my host mom disappeared after breakfast, at about 7AM.  My host father told me he would bring me to lunch elsewhere in the pueblo at noon, and then promptly disappeared as well.  I read for a while, studied some Spanish, played a game on my kindle, and then checked the time to see that it was only 8:45.  At this point, I wasn’t familiar with the town, and didn’t want to go exploring in case my host mom returned and wondered where I was.  I decided to do some exercises (push-ups, sit ups, lunges, etc.), since I hadn’t done anything of the sort since Tuesday.  While doing my push-ups, I looked around the room and actually laughed out loud.  Here I am, in a relatively bare room with cinder block walls, a concrete floor and a huge metal door, doing push-ups.  I guess I wasn’t locked in, so it wasn’t quite like prison.

I am a little worried, because it seems like whenever I’m around, my host parents are either gone or hanging out in their room, behind a closed door.  I’m yearning to practice my Spanish more, so hopefully I can figure out a way to spend more time with them.  Hopefully the next few days will be better…

I guess it’s time to study some more Español.

Hasta Luego!