Mangos

It´s a fruit that tastes great, and also looks pretty cool! I feel like we´re deprived of them in the states.

My site from a hill!

Now you have a visual when I refer to my site!

My Schools - 3

Parracana - 3 teachers, 150 students

I really enjoy the kids here! This to me is the cleanest school of the three. The latrines need some work, and they need a bigger stove in the kitchen (right now the cook makes a fire outside). Kids also need to be taught soem healthier habits, but all in all this school looks pretty good!

My Schools- 2

Tierra Blanca - 3 teachers, 150 students

I really like the director (principal) here! The classrooms are pretty clean, but the latrines and kitchen could use some major work. The kids here also could use some help with personal hygiene. I honestly belieive it´s just a matter of teaching, and making sure they have the right supplies (water, soap, tooth brush, toothpaste...).

My schools - 1

Xecaxjoj - 7 teachers, 300 students

Intervida helped build the school, but there´s still some work to do. The bathrooms are equipped with flushable toilettes but there´s no water- you can only imagine what it looks and smells like in there. The kids aren´t the cleanest when they come to school... I´m hoping to do something about this!

Rolling with it

Semana Santa was our second to last week in training. We were sworn in as official volunteers at the Ambassador´s house (beautiful by the way) on the 12th of April, and on the 13th I began my two year stint at my site in Totnicapan. Our last week was very hectic, and to top it off my host father passed away on the 12th as well. Wednesday morning he was throwing up blood, spent the day in the hospital, and then the following afternoon he passed away. He had been a heavy drinker for a while before I arrived, and had just begun AA sessions, but all signs pointed to chorrisis. Within the past 6 or 7 months he lad lost a tremendous amount of weight in addition to his appetite. In general he wasn´t healthy, but his death was sill very sudden - just that Monday we were joking around and I was taking pictures of him. When I first arrived at his house to stay he was very welcoming, and immediately engaged me in conversation. Our discussion topics ranged from religion to politics, to life in the United States. He was a good man, and will be missed!
Host families are very interesting. When you first arrive you´re like ¨who are
these people?¨and you can´t imagine ever feeling comfortable in their house. The food is different, the shower is luke warm (some bathed with just buckets and boiled water), the toilettes are essentially holes in the ground - everything´s different, and on top of that the language barrier! Looking back on it I realize that I found comfort in food - food that I never ate or craved in the states! I found myself eating chocolate bars, pan dulce (sweet bread), anything sweet. In addition to my snacking in-between meals, I also ate everything that was put in front of me by my host mother. In the Guatemalan culture, it´s good to be fat or gordita and it´s also rude to refuse food. So imagine me in the beginning, not quite comfortable, not wanting to say no, not wanting to tell her that I was already full off of candy bars (because that would be insulting) - plus the food was good! I love rice and beans! But overtime as I got more comfortable, as I was able to build more ¨confianza¨with the family, I could tell her that I wanted smaller portions and more vegetables. I also stopped eating junk food; basically I became more comfortable.
So I´ve been at my official site for about a week now and I´m going through the adjustment process all over again- I´m lucky they serve smaller portions lol. I live with a professor and his family of four kids ages 14, 12, 9, 4. The wife and I really hit it off. She´s 33 with 4 kids but still lively and still young. She´s also very eager to learn English and teach me Kíche (the indigenous language here of which 90% of the women only speak). The father´s kind of a big dork, but he loves his kids and I can tell he wants everything for them. I´ve actually been kind of sick this whole week first with a pretty heavy cold and then with the big ¨D¨(the saying goes that you´re not a true volunteer until you poop in your pants - thus far we´ve had 3 volunteers from our group bite the dust) so I haven´t been able to spend as much time with the family as I would have liked, but I have two years don´t I? Today I think I found a house to live in. Rules say that I have to live with a family for three months, but after that I have the option of living on my own, which I´ll be ready to do. I´ll get two floors, with a bathroom and shower INSIDE for 600 quetzales/month (that´s about $80 per month). Don Domingo my future landlord said that he will install a hot water heater, but I´m still waiting to see how much this will set me back. It´s funny because house searching in Guatemala doesn´t involve realtors or contracts, it´s simply having the initiative to walk around, introduce yourself to people, and ask if they know of a place ¨disponible para alquilar por dos años¨(available to rent for two years). When I first came to visit my site about 3 weeks ago I began asking immediately, saw some houses, but none really fit the bill. I then noticed that it was harder and harder to get offers; people weren´t even thinking before saying no. I was talking to a guy today, quite possibly my future neighbor, and he said that people are curious but also scared of me. He said that people will come around after seeing me around daily- when they can trust the fact that I really will be here for two years. Thus far I´ve gotten all positive responses from people here, so I guess in time they´ll come around.

The crew we traveled with and the view from the back of the truck.

Puerto Barrios?????

So much has happened since my last post! In trying to give some background to the posted photos I´ll begin with Semana Santa. The week before Easter in Guatemala, and I suppose in other Latin American Catholic countries, is a holiday and everyone takes vacations to the beach or other countries. I was looking forward to maybe getting some beach action myself; after all I had been living in a Central American country for nearly three months and had yet to experience anything tropical. I then found out that despite it being a national or even continental holiday, rules prohibit trainees to take overnight trips unless with their families. My family had no plans for any trips even after I prodded; they said they used to go, but that the traffic is unbearable (this makes sense considering that two lane highways traverse most of the country, and increased construction on these roads create extra chaos in the form of what Guatemalans call ¨colas or lines) and the beaches are overly crowded. Even though my family was out of the running, I still had high hopes for the families of my two site mates. That fell through fairly quickly. One family works in the ¨campo¨ planting and harvesting lettuce, a line of work that doesn’t allow for much vacation time or money for that matter. The third family also had no plans, I believe for no specific reason. I was pissed! A whole week of vacation gone to waste! I was so desperate I began thinking of ways I could enlarge my family to include people I had met who were going on vacation – turned out that I had not really met anyone I could trust.
So in place of beach time, we planned a week of movie watching on my site-mate Jill´s computer. I´m making it sound like I wasn´t excited to watch movies, when in truth I was, especially because Jill´s sister had sent her episodes of Grey´s Anatomy Season 3 from itunes. Just as I was slowly coming to grips with just watching movies, I get a call from Jill saying that her host mother´s daughter Adriana was taking a trip to Coban to speak or sing on an Evangelical radio station. Coban is the capital of the department Alta Verapaz with is situated in northern Guatemala, about 5 or 6 hours away from our department Sacatepequez. I jumped on the opportunity because it was a trip, regardless of where, and even though there are no beaches near Coban, the landscape has a tropical, jungle feel to it which was something I still had not experienced. Interestingly enough a large part of the Guatemalan landscape resembles North America. Pine trees are in abundance, and the climate in these areas is far from the heat and humidity expected of a Central American country. So Adriana said that Alexis and I could go along for the ride, and that she would pick us up at 3:00am the next morning. She also told us to bring bathing suites, which was strange considering that there´s really no water in Coban, but being so excited at the time I didn´t think twice about anything especially about how 8 people were going to fit in a truck.
So I get a call from Jill around 2:50am informing me that we will be riding in the back of a pick up truck (although the top was covered), and that I should bring blankets to keep warm. Before the phone call I was dressed in a tank top, Capri jeans, and sports sandals so I quickly grabbed the blanket off my bed, my fleece, scarf, and my long softball socks. The truck picked Alex and I up, and the minute we climbed in we all started cracking up. I guess the reality of the situation had hit us: we were up at 3:00 in the morning, about to ride in the back of a pick up truck for at least 6 hours, it was cold, and pretty crammed. I guess we were pretty desperate for a vacation! Luckily Adrian had padded the truck, so the ride was only 50% less uncomfortable. Jill managed to lie down, I sat up in the middle, Adrian´s daughter sat next to me, and Alex was kind of lying horizontally across us all. I tried to sleep, but the sharp turns and bumpy roads made it difficult, not to mention that my butt started to get tired (turns out the padding wasn´t quite enough) and the iron bars of the truck were digging into my back. Also, the headlights of the cars behind us were so bright, I had to put my sun glasses on to block the glare.
So three hours into the trip we stopped for a little breakfast. At this point we still thought we were going to Coban. Adrian´s daughter decided to sit in the seat part of the truck, a good decision on her part, and the back was left to the three gringas. Back on the road we stayed up laughing about the crazy situation we found ourselves in, taking comical videos with our digital cameras, and admiring the landscape. Because Jill had already been to Coban, I asked her if anything looked familiar, but when she said no we all started wondering… where the hell were we going? We saw the name of a town and decided to look it up in my Rough Guide. At this point we realized that we had passed Coban and were headed for either Puerto Barrios in the East or Honduras. The thought of Honduras was exciting, until we realized that we didn’t have our passports and that it was organizationally illegal for us to leave the country. Puerto Barrios didn’t scare us nearly as much because of the beach possibility. Now we were in the back of a truck unaware of our destination, the only thing to do at this point was to sleep. We all were able to lie down, and I actually enjoyed some good sleep. We awoke when the truck stopped about two hours later, and felt the significant temperature increase. At this point Jill’s host mother told us that we in fact were in Puerto Barrios – again the better alternative to Honduras.
We picked up four other people and groceries. So now there were six people and several bags full of food in the back of the truck, not to mention the unbearable heat. Until then, despite the conditions, we had enjoyed ourselves, but now our butts were numb, we were sweating, and we couldn’t stretch our legs because of the additional cargo. We were ready to arrive somewhere… ANYWHERE! The trip to the actual beach wasn’t the easiest on the nerves either. The road leading to the beach was a hilly, bumpy, dirt road that at the time seemed unending. The trail was made worse by indecision. Early in the road we passed a pretty nice looking beach, but I guess Adriana had her mind set on something else, Ok. About 30 to 40 minutes later we arrived at the other beach. We all got out and walked to the water- seeing the ocean was an amazing feeling, I wanted to jump in fully clothed, but then Adriana said she wanted to go to another beach with less people. WHAT A TEASE! We walked back to the truck and there was a discussion about the location of the ¨other beach¨ - not a good sign. Climbing back into the crammed truck simply hurt my feelings. We got back on the awful dirt road and ended up taking a wrong turn to some dead end, and the only thing I could do was attempt to block out the situation by closing my eyes and zoning out… although the frightening thought did occur to me that we wouldn’t actually get to the beach. It would take us forever to find this ¨other beach¨ and by the time we got there it would be time to begin the journey back to avoid arriving too late. What if the glimpse of the beach was all I was going to get? I regretted not jumping in when I had the chance. Turns out we ended up going to the beach we originally passed! My mind immediately thought of all the time wasted needlessly riding around – probably about 1.5 hours! We set up shop and not even two minutes later Alexis, Jill, and I were in the water. FINALLY! We enjoyed the rest of the day eating, napping, and strolling around. It was just what we needed. Jill´s host mother played a joke on us and said that we were going to stay over… mind you we would be sleeping in the truck. We were relieved to know that this was only a joke. The ride back was about 5 hours. It did rain, but I was so hot it felt good. We arrived at 11:00, which wasn´t too bad, but then I thought about the 12 hours of the day spent in the back of the truck.
The beach was great, but this trip was something we could only have done not knowing what exactly was in store. But all in all I was grateful for the experience! As much as I wanted to go to the beach I really couldn’t complain. So it is!

Finally got some beach time at Playa Real in Puerto Barrios during Semana Santa (a 6 hour drive in the back of a pick up truck)!

Here I am wearing traditional Mayan dress with my host family... this was a big moment in our bonding!

Hiking a river in Jalcatenango, Huehuetenango - look at how blue it is!!!!

Eating Coconut on the way back from Puerto Barrios!

A man preparing an alfombra

View of a long path of alfombras. I was able to catch a butterfly on an orange in one of the alfombras.

In just about every procession in Guatemala they have church related officials support a huge statue of Jesus carrying the cross in route to His Crucifixion. Others also carry a smaller statue of the Virgin Mary. The statues and the priest lead the procession with the rest of the town following behind. The procession moves very slowly stopping frequently to say a prayer.

The procession in my town during Semana Santa, the week leading up to Easter. In addition to many processions all over Guatemala, people also construct alfrombras or rugs in the streets as "carpet" for the procession. People stay up all night making the alfombras, which are constructed with colored saw dust or sand, flowers, fruit and vegetables.

My host sisters and mothers "tortillar-ing" for the baptism.

Here my site mates and I are making chuchitos with my family and other women in the community for a baptism the following day. It is tradition to make the chuchitos as take home food for all the guests in attendance - that's a lot of food! We took corn off the cob, but it through the molino, and made tortillas. We then filled the tortilla centers with tomato sauce and pieces of meat, enveloped the food inside the tortilla, and then wrapped the tortillas in the husks of the corn to cook. A pretty involved process!