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.