Christmas Traditions

So, it's been a month, and really not much work-related has happened. I moved to a new house that I am enjoying, and I had some amazing food in Antigua, thanks to some generous PCV family members, and that is about it. But today I'm going to talk about a really neat tradition that I experienced last night and tonight.

In case you aren't aware, tomorrow is Christmas Eve (really in 45 minutes for me...) and with this time of the year come a number of traditions, lights, trees, chubby men wearing red, the works. Well shockingly, there are other traditions in Guatemalan culture, and the one that I was invited into was kind of wonderful.

For the week before Christmas, every evening around dusk people of Catholic faith do something called "posadas." In a posada, a group of people gather at a predetermined house and then walk to another house. Granted this doesn't sound like much, so I should probably elaborate. The group I was in was made up mostly of women and children, and then of course there was me, standing out a little bit... About one-in-three people had a candle, some of which were in cool little torch-looking, lantern-ish apparati. Then there were four kids holding a chair sort of thing on their shoulders. It was decorated and clearly the important thing that we were taking on the walk (I don't mean for that to sound mocking, I just wasn't paying much attention to what they were carrying because the general activity was so beautiful).

We walked really slowly, and the women who organized the group started singing Christmas carols, at which point the people in the group who knew them joined in. Unfortunately I didn't know any of the words, and only about half of the tunes, so I couldn't contribute much, but it was still really nice. As we walked it turned from day to night (I think it is for this reason that we started at dusk) and the people who had brought along instruments to accompany the singing continued to play them completely randomly, which it turns out works well as long as everyone is being random (I was given a tambourine for a while and felt weird because I could only play it in time with the singers, which sounded strange since the rest of them were just being played whenever).

The first day I did this, I somehow ended up in the front, and had to stop every minute or so to allow the rest of the group to catch up with my giant strides. The second day I was right in the middle, which was better except for the fact that I was then a giant, white man right in the middle of this peaceful procession of short Guatemalan women and children. What I'm trying to say is that I felt out of place. Eventually we ended up at the house that was our destination, and then an interesting ceremony started. Some of the women from the group snuck into the house, but everyone else was stuck outside until some singing started right inside the door. Apparently they were asking the people outside something, because the women right outside sang a response (I didn't understand a word of what was being sung, but I do speak Spanish, I promise!). There were another couple call and responses in song, and then we were allowed inside to have a snack and a hot drink. The family in the house that we ended in was in charge of preparing enough snack for everyone, which was about 50 people. The next night the procession started from the house it had ended in the night before, and went to a different house.

I just thought it was beautiful with the candles and the singing, and demonstrated the generosity of the people here. They wouldn't allow me to leave without having eaten at least two of each type of snack, telling me both that I'm too thin and that it's only fair for my size that I get two. It felt nice to be able to be part of that activity, and it made me feel a little more like part of the community.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New Year.
--Eric

Getting Through

Ok,
So I haven't posted in a while, and it's partly because the last time I posted I said I was going to write about the rest of that trip, and I decided later that I didn't really feel like it, and partly because I've been lazy and bored and haven't felt like there was much to write about. So I'm going to write about that...

So school ended and the teachers said things about how the program has helped their school and then there was nothing for me to do. I spent a couple days in my room doing very little, and when I left my room I felt like my host mom was judging me for having been in my room all day, which meant that the next day I left my room even less often (at least not into the house). Now she probably wasn't judging me, but I was already feeling guilty about not doing anything, so I felt that way about it, plus she's often in a negative mood anyway, so she might just be frowning about that.

So anyway, that was a vicious cycle, but I sort of got out of it. Went on a visit to Todos Santos for All-Saints Day, but ended up back at my house with nothing to do again. This time I had a game-plan, but my game-plan started with some internet research, and right when I was about to start it the power went out, and it stayed out for 8 hours... So I lay in bed and did nothing. Unfortunately that day coincided with the day after I got news about a death in the U.S., so once I stopped having something to do I spent a lot of time grieving. Of course that's okay, but it might have been better if I had been out and about a little. Anyway, at that point I just started looking to the next week as my salvation, because I was going to leave for my vacation to the U.S.

In the next week nothing important happened that I can remember, and I am now in the U.S. writing this post on fast internet, which is nice, but distracting. In Guatemala I could write part of a blog entry while I waited for pages to load, but here I try to do that and end up reading the whole page. I had some culture shock when I got back, the biggest at first being that people weren't looking at me. In Guatemala someone is almost always staring at me, unless I'm locked in my room, so when I got to the airport in Houston and no one was looking at me, it felt a little strange. I started looking around the room, trying to spot the person who was sneakily looking at me, but I couldn't find them. Then I drank from a water fountain, and it was really fantastic. Speaking English is weird, too, but the problem is that I still want to be practicing Spanish, so I prepare Spanish in my head before asking questions of strangers, and then I can't use it.

Now I've been back for almost two weeks and I'm getting ready to go back again. I'm hoping to make some changes when I get back to be happier with my living situation, but regardless I'm looking forward to seeing my friends again for In Service Training the day after I return.
That's all for now, just be glad I wrote anything at all.

Guatemala Traveling Part 1

Okay, so three of my friends came from the U.S. to visit me, two of them stayed for one week and the third stayed two weeks and just left a couple hours ago. This is what we did:

Day 1: Explored Antigua. The Jade Museum, some churches, a ruined church, the market, parks










Day 2: Visited my farthest away school. Got up at 5am, missed the bus we were supposed to catch at 6, waited until 7, got to Comalapa on time to get picked up by my principal in his pickup. Rode in the pickup for 45 minutes on a dirt road to the school. The four of us taught healthy schools songs to all the kids and teachers in the school. We played a little soccer, but then it started pouring and we had to stop. We got home about 2pm, ate lunch and then we all fell asleep on the floor at my partner's apartment. That night we made cookies which we shared with my host family.

Day 3: I went to school in town and left them to sleep. After school we packed up and took a bus toward the lake. We were supposed to go to our hotel on Lake Atitlan, but there was a landslide on one of the roads that we were supposed to use, and we had to go back to the previous town, Solola, and find a place to stay. We ended up getting completely soaked from running around in the rain looking for a hotel with room, and ended up eventually finding one, but the guy charged us an outrageous price because he knew that we didn't have anywhere else to go. The day was actually kind of fun to look back on because we were walking around in rivers of rain water and eventually did find a place, and then we spent the evening with one of my friends from my training group. He told us that if it wasn't foggy and gross we could easily see the lake from where we were, but we weren't able to that whole day. That night, right as we got to our hotel, the sky cleared enough that we could see the reflection of the moon and stars off the lake.

Day 4: We made it down to the lake because they had cleaned up the road enough for us to pass. We got into the town of Panajachel and went looking for the boat to take us to our hotel. The guys at the dock that we found spent a lot of effort trying to convince us that we couldn't go to our hotel without paying extra because there weren't many tourists, and we had to pull out all the bargaining techniques in our arsenal to get them to give us the normal, posted rate. Then, while we were waiting for the boat to leave a woman came up to try to sell us choco-bananas (frozen bananas dipped in chocolate). She initially told me that they cost Q5 and I literally just laughed in her face. They normally cost Q1 or less, and after all the bargaining we had just done I wasn't in the mood. Fortunately, though, the laughing-in-their-face bargaining technique was very effective and she immediately said Q1, so I bought one (it was actually a chocolate covered frozen watermelon, but close enough). Then we went to our hotel, Iguana Perdida, which was absolutely beautiful. It was right on the lake, and isolated from big towns. We went hiking, but couldn't find the trail, so ended up clambering around on a dried up river bed for a while before heading back when it started to rain. Then we walked up to a little village that was above our hotel. We ate a delicious dinner that night at the hotel, and I played a travel version of Settlers of Catan with some Canadians who were staying there. This was the first of many interactions that we had with other travelers over the next weeks.

Day 5: We ate breakfast at the hotel and then headed back East. We took a boat from the hotel to Panajachel, a camionetta from Pana to Solola, another from Solola to Los Encuentros, then another to Tecpan. From there we caught a taxi that took us to the Mayan ruins at Iximche. We wandered the ruins for an hour or so and then it started pouring. The cab picked us back up, took us to the main road where we took another camionetta back to my site, grabbed our stuff (they had left a lot of their luggage at my house) and caught another camionetta to San Lucas. In San Lucas we had some typical Guatemalan snack foods (chuchitos, tostadas with frijoles/guacamole/salsa, atol de elote, and a rellenito de platano) and then caught another camionetta to Antigua. We settled into our hotel and then asked the night-watchman guy about places to eat dinner for cheap, and he sent us to a tienda that has a comedor in the back. If I haven't mentioned this before, a comedor is like a restaurant, but they only have 3 or 4 options of foods each day, which they prepare a little in advance. I really enjoyed it because it was very inexpensive for Antigua, and it was very Guatemalan (also surprising to find in Antigua...). It was one of my friends' birthday, so we went to a dance place to try to dance salsa, but they didn't play any salsa while we were inside. Of course I don't know how to dance salsa, so if they HAD played the music, I'm not sure how much better it actually would have been.

Day 6: We got up at 5:30 to catch a tour van to take us to the volcano Pacaya. It was cloudy again, as it had been every day of their visit. We started the hike with our guide, and once again it was very touristy. The hike was fairly unimpressive until we were 80% of the way up. We rounded a bend, and there in front of us was the top of the mountain, steaming from the lava. The rocks there are all black and jagged and difficult to pick up. We followed our guide and clambered over a semi-path that they had picked through the rock. Pacaya erupted at the end of May of this year, and so it has changed a lot from how it was 6 months ago. The gash at the top is new, as is the valley below it. The rocks we were standing on were hot, and there were places where you could roast a marshmallow in about .8 seconds. It was breathtaking being up there, it felt like a different world. Also, the air was cold, but the ground was really warm, so it was kind of like if you were sitting in a hot bath with a cold hose being sprayed on you, but not really... While we were up there, we ran into a girl that a couple of us recognized, and it turns out that we had met in Portland and had some really close mutual friends. Pretty weird place to bump into someone you know... So we went down the mountain, and chatted with some of our fellow tourists on the ride back, meeting a British couple. When we got back we had lunch with some of my Peace Corps friends, and then went shopping in the market. The vendors did their best to rip us off, but with a bit of regatear-age we found a few things for the boys to bring back for reasonable prices.
Then we got picked up by a pickup truck and taken to our hotel, Earth Lodge, which is up on a hill overlooking a town called Jocotenango with a view of three volcanoes. We couldn't actually see that view when we got there, because it was dark, but when we woke up, we discovered that we were in a beautiful place. Our room was a two-story cabin built around a tree with a window facing the view. That night we played darts and Trivial Pursuit and just relaxed in the main lodge area of the hotel. It was a great way to end the first part of the trip. The next morning, two of them left early to take a shuttle to the airport and go home. I'll tell the story about the next week of travels in my next post.

School is ending

October 8, 2010
So...I haven't been bored. We had two tropical storms that "standfasted" me in my site, but there were things to do. First there was Quince (I think I already wrote about that). Then there was school again, and planning a visit from some of my U.S. friends (thanks again for coming, guys!). Visiting the schools renewed my enthusiasm for my job and gave me hope for next year. Granted that's because I asked the teachers loaded questions like, "Have you seen any progress since we started the project?" Since they were then obliged to come up with changes they had seen, I felt validated in the work that I have been doing. Plus some of my schools are great, and I had sort of forgotten that.

Then on a Thursday I found out that my host dad was going to leave on Saturday for the U.S. to work legally (it had been planned for a while, but there was never a specific date). So the next day I made a cake and chocolate chip cookies, and we had a goodbye dinner for him. The next morning he left, and it reminded me of my process of leaving for Peace Corps, but I think it's very different for Guatemalans because they almost never travel, and thus spend most of their lives living in the same town and often the same house, as their families (parents, children, siblings, etc.). So it was hard on everyone when he left, and I felt like an intruder into a private event, witnessing their sadness. Then I was standfasted again. I thought that it was the worst possible timing, because my friends were flying in in two days, but the next day we were released from standfast, so it was okay. What followed was a whirlwind 2-week tour of the country that I will describe in my next post.

Quince - Independence Day

So if I haven't mentioned it before, September 15th ("Quince") is the biggest non-religious holiday of the year in Guatemala because it is their Independence Day. The schools have weeks of activities preparing for it, which means I haven't worked since August. I have gone to events at the schools, but haven't done anything that relates to my program at all. It all culminated on Wednesday, and I thought I would be going back to work today, but as it turns out, there is no school today so that the teachers can rest after the parties. This gives me an opportunity to write about all the stuff that happened this week.

On Monday I went to a school, and they did what I now consider to be "normal" Quince activities. Some kids bring in the flag, the national anthem (which is incredibly long) is sung, and then the flag is taken away. Then there are a bunch of performances by groups of kids, including dances, poems, songs, etc. A bunch of diplomas are given out to the participants. Then it ends with some words of thanks. So after that explanation I can say that I also went to a school on Tuesday, and it was pretty much the same, except there was a parrot in the audience, which I thought was really weird, so I took pictures of it.

So then for the actual Quince... In the morning I walked in a parade of all the urban schools, which means every public and private elementary, middle, and high school with all their students. That added up to probably around 2000 people, maybe more, and I walked with a middle school that I sometime visit in the afternoons. It was a good opportunity for the community to see that I am a part of the education system, because there were thousands of people lining the streets to watch the parade, and I kind of stand out in groups in Guatemala... The parade ended in the park and then there was the series of activities that I described in the previous paragraph, but with many more speeches mixed in. The event ended with some dances, and most people went home for lunch. Then in the evening there were more speeches, and then a live band came out and started playing the 7 popular songs that play here, over and over, starting with, "En Cambio Tu."

Now I need to describe a phenomenon that I find very bizarre. For some reason, despite their Latino nature, when listening to music, Guatemalans either are dancing in a pair, or are standing completely still. We're talking: no head bobbing, no foot tapping, no body swaying, nothing. It's like movement is banned unless it's being done in a pair. So when the band started playing, no one in the crowd moved at all, they all just stood in a group and stared up at the band. In the meantime, we crazy Gringos were standing in the back nodding our heads, occasionally doing a random dance move, and generally letting the rhythm get us... We proceeded to have a really fun night that included dancing all around the main park with plenty of people staring at us. It was one of the most fun times I've had in Guatemala so far.

A month of happenings

Hello everyone. I know it's been over a month, sorry. I had a few troubles in August, and I didn't want to write blog entries when I was in a bad mood because I didn't feel like I would accurately portray my life here. Now those times seem to be behind me, and I'm back. So some of the weird things that I have seen in the last month.

I went to a queen of the school competition at an elementary school (they asked me to be a judge, but I declined on the basis of cultural and language confusion) that was actually pretty normal for Guatemala. One student from each grade gets all dressed up and parades around. There are several stages including dance, walking around, and more walking around. If it had been up to me the kindergartener would have won for being the cutest little girl in the history of those competitions, all shy and dressed in traditional Guatemalan "traje." That's why I wasn't a judge...

The next day a different school was doing a dance competition, which was much more, um, different, than the previous day's competition. Each grade had choreographed a dance for a few of their students that they performed in front of the rest of the school. I would have expected to once again vote for the kindergarteners, but they did something strange. I'm sure it wasn't their idea, but they danced to the Shakira song that she wrote for the World Cup. Apparently their teacher thought they would best represent this song if the dancers all had their faces painted black to represent the Africans... There was one girl who didn't have black face makeup, but she was representing Shakira (long, curly, blonde hair, possibly a wig, but there are a few blonde children around here...). They sort of danced, as much as you can expect 6-year-olds to dance in front of a crowd of people, but I was too distracted by their makeup to think they were particularly cute. I figured the 1st graders would then take my vote by being the next-smallest group, but they too had been given a strange dance. They were mostly girls, all dressed in really short skirts, shirts that showed their bellies, and lots of makeup. They danced to a Spanish R&B song, and they gyrated and moved in pretty sexually provocative ways, which considering that they were mostly 7 & 8-years-old, made me feel uncomfortable for them. Not that this is abnormal in America, but I still don't like it... Then the 2nd graders... Another R&B song. This time, mostly girls, but two boys dressed as thugs and danced like thugs for the whole song. Backwards hats, baggy pants, all they needed were big, gold chains and they would have been the complete picture. The girls were dancing separately from the boys, first in a wide line facing the audience, but then they formed a single line front to back. Unfortunately there wasn't enough space for them where they were dancing, so the girl in the back kept getting smashed into the wall. I was basically just sitting with my jaw dropped for each performance, and then scribbling notes in my notebook for this blog entry. The older kids didn't do things that were strange, at least not for Guatemala. Dancing to "ranchero" music in cowboy hats and boots. That's pretty much it. The 6th graders won for including choreographed removal of their hats in their dances...

That's all for now. I'll write more about August soon. I'm going to be bored this week I think...

Food Issues

Well, this has been a topic in my back-pocket for a while, and after my dinner last night I think it's about time I finally write about it. While you expect to hear things about food that involve beans, tortillas, eggs, and maybe illnesses, there is an aspect of food in Guatemala that I never anticipated before I got here: how to eat it. While the answer to this question may seem obvious to some of you, ("try putting it in your mouth, idiot...") it turns out that we take for granted a few basic things about eating food in the US.

Really this post is all about utensils. Apparently, until recently there were no utensils in Guatemala; people either used their hands, tortillas, or drank straight from the bowl. Their conversion to utensil use has been a bit of a struggle, and they still seem to dislike the idea of using more than one utensil for a meal. This creates problems for me... Imagine that a nice Guatemalan woman puts in front of you a hot bowl of soup. The first thing you think is, "Why are they serving soup at 1pm when it's 90 degrees outside and 90% humidity?" The second thing is, "How in the world am I going to eat that piece of meat?" The problem is, you've looked into the soup and seen a piece of chicken half the size of your fist with a giant bone, and it's just hanging out in the broth. You have been given a spoon, but there is no way you are going to be able to cut the chicken with that, especially because of the bony protrusions that are protecting large portions of the meat. The soup is hot enough that you have to blow on each spoonful of broth before putting it in your mouth, so you can guess that the chicken is also quite hot. Which leads us to my complaint: the correct thing to do is put down your spoon, reach into the soup, pull out the chicken with your fingers and eat it with your hands, trying to avoid having any of soup that has come up with the chicken fall on your clothes. Technically there are also giant vegetable chunks in the soup, but I always just spend a while cutting them with my spoon and trying not to slosh soup out of the bowl while I do so.

So that's the soup issue. The other issue is carne asada. In case you don't know (because I didn't before I got here) carne asada is a thin, wide piece of beef that is grilled (usually until it's really tough, at least in Guatemala). It is often served for parties or special occasions, the downside of which is that it is often accompanied by a plastic fork, and nothing else. For those of you who want to try to be optimistic and are thinking about those really sturdy plastic forks that you find sometimes, that is not what we're dealing with, we're talking about the cheapest, flimsiest plastic forks that exist. So you have a plastic fork, and a very large, very tough piece of meat, and your job is to find a way to eat it without, a: choking to death, b: making a huge mess, c:looking like an idiot. As it turns out, you're supposed to ignore parts b and c of that, and just try to avoid choking to death. I have seen several strategies that Guatemalans use to deal with this problem, but none of them are great. One is that you put the entire piece of carne asada in a tortilla (please note that the carne is larger than the tortilla) and then proceed to try to tear chunks off of it with your teeth. Another is that you grab one side with a folded tortilla, and stick your fork in the other side and try to tear chunks off (this is more likely to break the fork than the carne). The ultimate strategy that I have now adopted is to just abandon the fork, and just like with the soup, pick up the carne with both hands and try to tear it into pieces. If you can't tear it, you bite it and try to tear it that way. It's usually dripping in sauce and has often been bathing in beans, so you're guaranteed to get food all over your hands and mouth, but as far as I can tell that is completely acceptable. Guatemalans think it's amusing that every time I finish eating carne asada I immediately get up and wash my hands, but I just can't stand that feeling of being coated with food...

Let's be clear, though. Guatemalan food is delicious. Fresh corn tortillas are like nothing in the US, as are frijoles volteados, which are black beans that are liquified with fried onions and spices, and then fried. I really need to get someone to teach me to make them from scratch before I leave, because otherwise I'm going to have a craving that the US can't satisfy...

Ups and Downs

So yesterday I went to school, and I think that the course of the day accurately describes my life in Peace Corps. First of all I should say that I waited a while to call the principal the day before to remind her that I was coming, and she didn't answer, so they didn't probably know I was coming. When I got there the principal wasn't there and neither was another teacher. Since there are only 6 that means that a third were gone... So I found the one who was in charge and told her that I was there to observe lessons. Unfortunately I forgot to say "health" lessons, so she invited me in and I ended up sitting in on a 30 minute math lesson. So to stop myself from shouting out all the answers to the elementary school math problems I started doing random math problems in my notebook, and pretty much did that the whole time. Eventually the teacher left without saying anything to me, and I figured out that she had gone to make a snack for the whole school, and that she wasn't coming back until snack time was over. Since I was supposed to be observing her lesson, I decided that this would be a good time to leave, so I did. I went and found another teacher who said that he had a lesson prepared. Lo and behold, he did! It was a health lesson and everything! Even more exciting, he is 20 years old and just started working there a month ago, so he had missed most of our presentations, but still did a good-ish job at his health lesson.

So that was a nice surprise, and then I hung out for snack and recess, and after recess went to the next teacher's class. That teacher had good activities (charades!) but he was trying to hard and his lesson went on for a really long time. We like lessons that last no more than 15 minutes, because at some point the kids lose focus, as does the teacher. Anyway, so that was alright, but I wasn't terribly impressed so I left and went to the last class, which happened to be kindergarten. Apparently they get out 30 minutes earlier than the other kids, which I didn't know until the teacher told me that she only had 6 minutes to do the health lesson. I said that's fine, because we like short lessons. She proceeded to make my day...

So she started with a song that I did with them when I did lessons there a couple weeks ago called Pin Pon. It involves dancing around and silly movements, and when a group of 5 year-olds does it it's adorable. It was made better because that class has one girl in it who seems to be both brilliant and adorable who remembered that the version that I use is different than the one that they're used to, and she made the teacher fix it whenever she got it wrong. The teacher then proceeded to ask all the right questions to get the kids to think about what they need to do daily hygiene-wise. Then, as if I wasn't already pumped enough, she went back to whatever the lesson had been before I came in, which it turned out, was the 5-year-olds doing a choreographed dance to music from a CD. And they sang along in calm and pretty little 5 year-old voices, and one of them harmonized on accident. And I left the room smiling, and my day was good...

26 July 2010

This month has been strange because we have spent so much time away from our sites for work-related events. We had the 4th of July party plus the two days before it, and then we just finished a week long series of classes at the office that is called reconnect. There were two days of health related training and then three days of Spanish classes. The end result of this week is that I know how to say a lot of things in Spanish that sound perfectly harmless, but can be taken to mean something completely different. Also that I feel like I haven't worked with my schools for a month...

Today will be my first day back, and I think it should be okay, but it has potential to be frustrating. I'm going to a school that had already been in our program for two years, but with a volunteer who was doing a lot more teaching the kids than I do. According to the principal, they know nothing about most of the program, so I have to start with them as if they have never had a volunteer before. So today I'm giving them a presentation about "What is Healthy Schools." Ideally it goes the same way it always does, but we'll see.

I recently took a trip to the city of Huehuetenango which is in the department of Huehuetenango (the capital cities often have the same names as the department, in case that seems weird). I visited some Mayan ruins which were beautiful and later went to a fair and rode a ferris wheel. I would like to mention that the ferris wheels here are run at about 10 times the speed of the ones in the US, so it's a little different than you might expect. I posted some pictures of the ruins on facebook if you're interested. I had a strange realization moment while I was in the ruins. It was my dad's birthday, and I remembered while I was there, so I called him from the top of one of them. When I started to describe to him where I was, I realized how different my life is right now than it has been in the past. Ruins are pretty common here, so I hadn't been thinking about the fact that nothing like that exists in the US. Makes me realize how my perceptions of normal have changed already...

Recent events

July 6, 2010

So it's been a while again, eventually I'm going to have to stop saying that... Things have been going really well here, with my life and with my work. I have Guatemalan friends who I enjoy hanging out with, and this may blow your mind, but one of them invited me to a LAN party (google it if you're confused) at his house to play counter strike... It hasn't happened yet, but I'm excited about the prospect. Work has been going great. We updated our presentation that we do to explain to the teachers about our project, and today we gave it to our biggest school (over 1000 kids!) and it was really fun. We taught them a few songs and made them dance and generally had a goofy and fun time. They participated a lot more than I was expecting, so it went over really well with them. I'm starting to feel like the teachers and directors know who I am, and that they are comfortable with me, which is a wonderful feeling. Of course we hadn't had school for two weeks, so this might be just a false high after two really successful day back, but still, I'm very optimistic.

I haven't mentioned this before, but sometimes I strike up conversations with random people on the street, and it usually turns out to be a really positive thing. Old men especially, because they like to sit for hours on the corners chatting with each other. I just walk over and introduce myself and we talk about life and my project and their perceptions of Americans and my perceptions of Guatemala and it's all great. I don't know if other volunteers do this or not, but they really should. It's a lot harder for the girls, I know, because they really can't approach random men on the street without breaking some social norms, but even chatting with the market women or women working in stores has been good for me. Everyone is curious who the giant gringo is, so they generally enjoy finding out...

Last week we had a few days of activities leading up to the 4th of July party, and they were really fun. We had a basketball tournament that you guys who haven't seen me play basketball might think I would have been helpful in, but I really wasn't. I watched all the World Cup games at the office in a lounge with a bunch of other volunteers, which is much more fun than watching them by myself, and all the games were fantastic and dramatic. On Saturday there were some soccer games, and I discovered that I should never be asked to play midfield, because that requires an awful lot more running than my body prefers to do. In the afternoon we had a BBQ with almost all the Guatemalan volunteers (there were probably over 150 of us there, we have over 200 in country), and in the evening we hung out in Antigua. I'm not sure why we celebrated the 4th of July on the 3rd, but my guess is because it was a Saturday, which is more convenient.

My birthday is coming up this weekend, and so far I have very little control over what is happening. My closest Guatemalan friend has the same birthday as I do, so he invited me to lunch with his family. Then my host family told me they are going to make dinner for me, so I guess I just have the morning free... I am in charge of making my own cake, because most Guatemalans don't know how to bake, so they were planning on buying me a cake, but store-bought cakes here are not great, so I'm going to use some of the brown sugar that I have received from the states to make my favorite cake, Irish Potato Cake with caramel frosting.

Thanks to everyone for reading, and for caring enough to follow what's going on with me. I have found that I really value the wonderful connections I have made over the course of my life, and I think about you all often. Thank you for being part of my life.

Day in the Life

Today I went to an event that is called the Eleccion de Madrina Magisterial. It's a pageant that involves four female teachers showing themselves off. They each model four different outfits, they have a talent section, and they have to give a little speech. One of them is eventually voted by a panel of judges to be the representative of our district for something (I really don't know what, but I could guess that it might have something to do with their Independence Day celebration which is in September). So they canceled school for the whole district and had this pageant, which was quite amusing to me, as all pageants here are.

As with most of these things, the crowd had a favorite before the women even came out, because there were two tables of teachers who were rooting for one of their friends, and they had brought lots of noisemakers.

[Sidebar] I don't think I've remembered to mention in the past how much Guatemalans love noisemakers. If you mention to any Guatemalan when your birthday is, you are guaranteed to have a series of fire crackers set off outside your bedroom at 5am on that day, even though it's a day you feel like you deserve to be able to sleep as late as you want. For any holiday, or semi-holiday, or day that feels like it could be a holiday, some skeezy men come out of the woodwork with an infinite supply of "bombas" which are like fireworks except that they don't emit any light or color, just one "BANG" loud enough to set off the car alarm at my house when the bomba is set off 4 blocks away... [End sidebar]

So these teachers had whistles, their voices, and balloons, which it turns out can be inflated with the sole purpose of popping to make a bunch of noise (and considering that when I was younger I had a distinct fear of balloons popping, it is not something that I would have ever thought of on my own). So the popular teacher would come out to do something and these two tables would make a ton of noise and pop some balloons, and then someone from their party would set off a firecracker at the back of the room (yes, people set off firecrackers indoors in Guatemala, how else can you expect to make enough noise to deafen the whole room). Then the other teachers would come out and there would be ten seconds of polite clapping and then awkward silence while they walked down off the stage, all the way through the crowd of 300 people, made their turn on the catwalk, and then walked all the way back up onto the stage and eventually, backstage. This process usually took about two minutes, and was made slightly more awkward by the fact that the MCs would periodically ask the crowd to clap when the silence was feeling really long.

Wow, apparently I'm feeling long-winded today, sorry about that, I still have quite a bit to say... So each participant would come out in a dress, and once they had all gone there would be an interlude to allow the women to change into their next dress. Two girls sang two songs one time, and they were surprisingly good, and a boy sang two songs a different time, and he was also surprisingly good. There was a group of girls who demonstrated a ceremonial dance that had something to do with corn, and there were four boys who did the classic Guatemalan boy dance, which I have no idea how to describe except that it involves very little movement and tends to go on for at least five minutes. The most notable interlude was done by a boy and a girl who both appeared to be in their early teens, but that's usually deceiving here, they could well have both been 25... Anyway, the girl was wearing an skirt that was kind of like a tutu, but slightly larger (I should remind you all that Guatemalan culture is very conservative, and skirts above the knee are rarely seen), and the boy was.....a mime. I'm not kidding. He was wearing all black and had his face painted white and didn't speak a word the whole time. The skit was that he wanted her to dance to music, but she didn't like most of his choices of music. He would put on a song and then dance to it for a couple minutes while she stood motionless, and then he would stop, gesture at her angrily, and then gesture at the DJ (who was wearing a backward, white baseball cap and a baggy white t-shirt, just like any reputable DJ should) to change to the next song. At one point he was moonwalking to Billy Jean. It was pretty incredible/bizarre. Eventually he found a song that she would dance to, and then she danced down off the stage and up through the crowd while he made fun of how she was dancing and demonstrated how he thought it should be done. So that was weird.

The only other weird thing was in the talent section. One contestant did an amazing dance sequence with a partner (I'd say it was swing, but it could have easily been some other type since I know nothing about dancing), and two of the others sang a song. The weird thing was that the fourth one sewed a purse for her talent. The dancers had just gone off stage and a stage hand brought out a table and a basket of cloth, and out came the contestant, sat down at the table and silently started working. We couldn't see anything that she was doing, since she was up on stage, and she didn't say a word or hold up her work to show what she was doing or anything. The MCs appeared to be staring at her with no idea what she was doing and the crowd just started chatting amongst themselves. Once she finished it turned out that she had taken a pair of jeans and some random other cloth, and turned the jeans into a jean purse, which actually looked pretty nice. She proceeded to take the purse down and give it to the judges, and hardly looked at the crowd once. I guess she did demonstrate a talent, it just wasn't a talent meant to entertain a group of people.

So that's what I did for work today...

Rain Stories

I'm sorry it's been a little while, I'll try to sum up lots of little things that have happened.

Most people have heard that we had a visit from Tropical Storm Agatha, and that a giant sinkhole in the capitol swallowed a building... That didn't really affect me except that for two days it poured rain like I've never seen, and the next week they cancelled school for all the public schools. There were some areas that were really damaged, and I think over 100 people died, but none of that was anywhere near me, and the volunteers who are in areas that were in danger were consolidated to a safe point near their sites. We have really good emergency plans here, so I don't worry too much about these kinds of events.

Speaking of rain, I don't remember if I've described how it rains here, but I'm going to now, so sorry if I'm repeating myself. It almost never rains in the mornings, only in the afternoons and nights. It usually starts around two or three and it's usually only an hour or so, but some days it is flash-flood type rain. On Tuesday I was in the big city nearby, Chimaltenango (which is also the name of the department), when the rain started. I had made a calculated risk by leaving my rain pants behind and only bringing my rain jacket, but that was because it hadn't been raining hard since the tropical storm. So the moment I stepped off the bus the downpour started, and within a couple minutes I discovered that despite the large quantity of rain that they get, that city is not built to deal with it very well. It turns out that people like to throw their garbage in the street, and it tends to get into the stormdrains and clog them up. So five minutes after the rain started the streets were rivers about 6 inches deep, and intersections were about a foot deep where the two rivers met. The Guatemalans are accustomed to this kind of rain, and their strategy is just to stop wherever they are and wait for it to pass. I, of course, do not have that kind of patience since I come from Oregon where it tends to never stop raining, so I just kept on going through the rain and the rivers. I had some idea that my REI rain jacket would keep me dry enough as long as I darted from awning to awning. Unfortunately, most of the awnings are only about a foot wide, so I found myself in the waterfall coming off the awning as often as not. Long story short, I was completely soaked within about four minutes. I still stopped under awnings because it felt like a place to rest, and when I did I would smile and say hello to the group of Guatemalans that had chosen that place to wait out the storm. Then I would smile at them and jump (usually literally, the sidewalks are not really flat so much as they are a series of uncomfortably tall stairs up and then down and then back up again because every store put it its own sidewalk at a different level) back out into the rain and the rivers.

Eventually I got to my destination, the grocery store, around which there were about 25 people because they have an especially big awning. I went inside with my jeans plastered onto my legs and my shoes sloshing at every step (I had ended up just walking through the rivers at the intersections, because there seemed to be no other option). I started walking around, stopping every once in a while to see if I wanted to buy any of the things in front of me, and after about a minute the woman whose job it was to mop the floors found me and started following me around. I would stand for ten seconds looking for things to buy, and then move on leaving a several foot wide puddle of water, which she would immediately mop up. She pretty much just followed me around until I was done and checked out, at which point I'm assuming she breathed a sigh of relief and went to take a break since no one else was going to be coming into the store until the rain stopped... I felt kind of bad for creating a small brook in her territory, but there really wasn't anything else I could do.

I went back out into the rain, walked down the middle of the main street (the very middle of the streets were usually okay for walking because the city engineers at least had the foresight to make them slope to both sides) back to the bus stop, and caught a bus back to my town. I should mention that I somehow ended up with a window seat and that a high school aged girl in a school uniform who had somehow avoided getting wet in the rain sat down next to me. Unfortunately for her, all Guatemalans instinctively want to sit three to a seat, so a woman sat down next to her, smashing her into my soaked-body. Nothing I could do about that either. Sometimes you're just soaked-to-the-bone on a bus in Guatemala and people just have to deal with it.

Stormy Weather

Ok, so here´s what happened. First, I had a music file on my mac that only plays on Windows Media Player, so I put it on a flash drive, transferred it onto my host dad´s computer, burned it onto a cd, and ripped it onto my mac, thus defeating the incompatibility issue. Second, I played the file, which just so happens to be Mozart´s Requiem, one of the more intense pieces of music ever written (Dies Irae anyone?). Halfway through the song an incredibly intense thunderstorm started shaking my house, setting off the car alarm and generally being awe-inspiring. There´s something about pounding rain on a metal roof with thunderclaps setting off alarms and REALLY loud Mozart´s Requiem that makes me very very happy...Seriously!

Interesting Week

Ok, so I thought I was going to write a blog post about this one camionetta event and have a great blog post, but then Friday happened, and now this may become long, so I´m just warning you in advance...

So first things first. We went to a school on Wednesday that is really pretty, but you have to take a camionetta (chicken bus) to get there, which is fine, we take them pretty much everyday. However, on the way back a bus stopped before we got down to the road, but we didn´t have to run to catch it because the driver and ayudante both got off to help unload things from on top of the bus. So we just walked onto the bus while they were busy. When I stepped onto the bus, I looked up and said "Whoa!" and all the Guatemalans on the bus started laughing. This is because someone had removed all the seats from the back half of the bus, and replaced them with a wall of giant carrots. Brief sidenote, the carrots here are enormous. Imagine a normal carrot you would buy in the grocery store in the US, then make it an inch shorter and 4 times as big around. So anyway, somehow, someone had completely filled the back half of this bus with carrots, floor-to-ceiling, smashed in so tightly that there were no cords or anything holding them up, just the force of being wedged tightly in... So somehow with this giant orange wall and the smell of carrots strongly filling the bus, Carrie didn´t notice them, so I poked her in the side and pointed toward the back. So she turned around and said, "Holy crap!" and the people all laughed again. Then the ayudante got back on and tried to rip us off. I gave him 4Q for the both of us, and he told me that it costs 6Q per person, so I responded as any person who knows the actual cost would, with a confident, ¨Nohombre¨which always lets them know that you know they´re trying to rip you off. So that was going to be my whole post, but now there´s going to be a detailed description of Friday morning, because there needs to be.

Ok. So, Friday there was no school in our Municipality (think County) because they were celebrating the Day of the Family, which I don´t think is really a holiday, because other Municipalities had school. Instead of school they had an event that all the teachers from all our schools and the middle schools had to go to. So these kinds of events don´t really exist in the US, and this one was especially unusual. The first really exciting thing that happened was that there was a school choir there! Choirs really don´t seem to exist here, and I want to start one, so seeing one was reassuring. However there were several note-worthy things about the choir: first off, there was never a harmony, they all sang in unison; second, their songs were in 4/4 but the director directed in 3, but it worked for them. Third, they sang a Spanish version of My Heart Will Go On. But I was reassured that they do know what choir is here.

At that point I wasn´t planning on mentioning anything really in this blog about the event, but then there were dancers. I forgot to mention that the choir was from a middle school from a different Municipality. They seemed to be the entertainment for the morning. So their next thing was dancers. There were about 12 middle school aged kids, and they were dancing. I didn´t pay much attention to their first song, but the second one started with the intro to Thriller, which got my attention. Unfortunately, they did not do a fully choreographed Thriller dance, but fortunately they did do a Choreographed dance. It turned out that the song was a medley of really well known songs (and by well known songs I mean some ridiculously popular songs from the US like Thriller and The Macarena, which I guess is actually Spanish, and then songs that play 25 times at every dance here that none of you in the US have ever heard unless you´ve been to Guatemala or maybe Mexico or another Central American country). So this medley ended with a particular Shania Twain song that I got the impression that they didn´t understand the words to... I felt bad because I was laughing out-loud and everyone else was just watching silently, but the boys in the group kept posing with their arms crossed and their sunglasses on with thug looks on their face every time the song said, "Man! I feel like a woman." It was at this point that I turned to Carrie and said, "This is going in my blog."

If that last paragraph was unclear, I apologize, I´d be happy to rewrite it as many times as I need to to make you all understand the situation, because I crack up every time I think about the boys dancing to Man I Feel Like a Woman.

So yeah, that was enough to merit a blog mention, but that´s not the end of it. I don´t think I´ve mentioned the fact that I am a huge celebrity here yet...so I´m mentioning it now. Literally thousands of people here know my name, and people call my name from a distance on the street every day. Now granted most of these "people" are kids between the ages of 6 and 12, but still... So anyway, a lot of people know who I am, and it´s a little strange, but I am literally a celebrity here. Sometimes, though, I forget, and it takes events like this to remind me of that fact.

So the next events in the morning of random entertainment was a raffle drawing, followed by some competitions to win other prizes. For one of these competitions they asked for 5 men to volunteer. Men in Guatemala really enjoy talking for a long time in front of groups, but they´re not so hot about volunteering for activities. So they were having a lot of trouble getting 5 men up front and the women around me started teasing me that I should go. After several minutes had passed and they still only had 3 guys, I decided it probably wouldn´t be so bad, as long as I just understood what the competition was, so I stood up. Literally the second that I stood up the room exploded in cheers. I forgot to mention that the vast majority of teachers are women, so it was as if 150 women had been staring at me to see if I would go up there, and started screaming as soon as I decided to. It was pretty intense, I don´t think my face has every gone from tan to red that fast in my life. That´s not to say that I didn´t thoroughly enjoy it... So they got a fifth guy, and the woman with the microphone started explaining what we would be doing, which I was fortunately able to understand. It turned out that it was a "Whoop like a Ranchero" competition, which means that you have to do a high-pitched laugh in falsetto into the microphone. I promply moved farther away from the microphone so that I wouldn´t have to be the first one, because I was somewhat unclear on what exactly was expected of me. The crowd thought that was pretty hilarious... So I was second, and I gave them a little disclaimer that we don´t have that competition in the US, but that I would try my best. I then prayed that my vioce wouldn´t break, and gave them a falsetto whoop. Once everyone had gone they used an applause-o-meter to judge who won. The room fairly exploded when it was my turn to be applauded, and needless to say I won the competition. I think that my face stayed red for about 10 minutes, and one of our principles was amused to discover that all she had to do was look at me and mime applauding to make me turn red all over again. I did win 3 plates and 3 mugs, so that was nice. I gave them to my host mom, since I really don´t have room to store those kinds of things in my room.

I think that´s the whole story! It was an eventful and entertaining sort of Friday morning. In recent news, I made no-bake cookies today and learned the hard way that you should taste test raisins here before you put them in cookies, because if they´re not good they kind of ruin the cookies...but now I know for the next time.

Thanks for reading everyone. For those of you who missed it, the biggest news in the US is that Galaxy Farm released their first CD, and you can buy it on iTunes. If you don´t know what I´m talking about, type Galaxy Farm into your facebook search, or your iTunes store search, and you´ll discover how talented my friends really are...

Work and Life

This week we gave our first lesson to teachers, which I think signals the beginning of our real work. It was an hour long session that started with a demonstration of an interactive sort of lesson, and covered what our program is, what their school needs to do to be healthy, and then gave them an opportunity to ask us questions to clarify what we´re doing here. It went pretty well, so that was good. We´re still mostly just visiting schools and observing how they work, how clean the kids are, and what they need to do to be healthier.

In normal life stuff, I played soccer several times in the last couple weeks, usually with elementary school kids, but once in my old town with some adults. For all my guy friends who may appreciate it, I may have jumped to trap a bouncing ball and used the wrong part of my anatomy to stop it, and gone and sat on the side for a few minutes... Also, we had a dramatic several days at my house when the cat got sick and gave birth to some premature kittens. We had to feed them with an eye-dropper, but in the end they were too young and their mom wasn´t taking care of them, and none of them made it... Pretty sad day, but since we were kind of expecting it, it wasn´t too terrible. I think it helped my mood that I spent a couple hours playing with the kids later that day.

Not sure what else to report. I have been watching the first season of The West Wing, and it´s fantastic. Juwan Howard makes a cameo appearance, which I think should motivate Paul to give the show a chance... TV on DVD is a life-saver here in the evenings.

I think that about covers it.

Work Update

Hi everyone. So we still haven´t done anything major in the schools except introduce ourselves, but we´ve been to almost all our schools which is something of an accomplishment considering that we have 19. I´m still a little stumped about what to do in the afternoons usually, except that I´ve made a friend who is a teacher at a Middle School and on Fridays I go with him when he teaches P.E. so that I can play/help. It´s exhausting, but not for the activity, I barely do any running. It´s exhausting for the amount of Spanish I have to listen to and for how long I have to be focused and for how fast the kids that age and my friend all speak. Super draining, so I sleep well on Friday nights.

I baked a cake yesterday, the kind that we always had for our birthdays at my house, except that as my mom correctly predicted, I couldn´t get the frosting to set, so I went and bought a box of frosting and used that. It wasn´t quite the same, but it worked. It´s weird how hard it is to find brown sugar here. I haven´t found it yet...

Hmm, I think that´ll be all for now. I´m out of ideas and I´m getting sleepy...

In Site

4 Abril, 2010

Okay, so it's been almost a week that I've been in my site, and so far I love it. I'm living with a host family who is really great. They BUILT ME A BATHROOM! When we came to look at the house I was just going to have a room and share all the others, but during the week I was gone they built a bathroom in my room with a shower, and since they had met me at that point, they dug down into the floor so that the shower would be tall enough. It's the first time I've ever had a shower that I didn't have to stoop to use since I have been tall. Pretty crazy. Anyway, then they helped me find a bicycle and they're all really nice and well educated and I like hanging out with them, so life is good. There are 3 kids who live here during the week and there are 2 more that come with their family on the weekends. They're all adorable, and we play games pretty much every day. So I'm enjoying my time here at home.

We haven't started working yet at all, because it's still Semana Santa, so there's nothing we can do except plan. That means that I'm pretty much just hanging out with my host family and occasionally going down to hang out with my partner and site mate. I need to get out and find a soccer team or at least some random kids to play with, but my host brother is supposed to show me the soccer field soon, so after that it should be easier to find people to play. Our town isn't very big, but I haven't gone exploring yet because I just like to hang out with my host family most of the time to get to know them. Anyway, that's about it, I mean other things have happened, but I'm not going to talk about them right now.

12 Abril, 2010

Okay, so we've had about a week of work, and so far it's going fine. At this point we pretty much just have to visit the schools and meet all the teachers and the students and stand around looking pretty (or at least gigantic and strange). Today we went to seven schools with our CTA (district superintendent), and they all picked dates for us to visit in May, so that's good. The most important thing is that the teachers find out who we are and what our program is about, and that the students and communities start to see us and recognize us as being different from tourist gringos...

I don't really know what else to talk about right now, except that today I'm going to start the process of getting contacts (for my eyes, not people's numbers) and I'm really excited about it. Also my old host mom had her baby last week, and I'm hoping to meet her today, so that's cool. Alright, more later. Thanks for reading. Feel free to give suggestions or ask questions in the comments because I'm not really sure what kinds of things I'm forgetting to talk about; I'm sure there are a lot.

Volunteer Time

Hey, So we swore in today which makes us official volunteers, which is nice. We're all staying in a hostel tonight, which is why I have internet right now. To answer the question about Semana Santa, it's holy week, so it has to do with Easter. Also a little random tidbit: they sell used clothes down here that came from the U.S., and almost all the Guatemalan men wear them all the time. Yesterday on the bus the Ayudante was wearing a shirt that said Steve Blake's All-Star Basketball camp, and I thought of all you Blazer fans, and how you're probably mourning the trade with Blake and Outlaw (especially Alison). I guess the team's still doing well, which is the most important thing. That's all, sleep time, making No-Bakes tomorrow.

Finished Training

Hi,
I don´t have anything interesting to say, other than that as of an hour ago I have finished training. Tomorrow I swear in as a volunteer, and I´m going to wear boots that my host dad made for me, which I am very excited about. My site is really nice, and there are taller people there! The first week in my site will be Semana Santa, which is the biggest celebration of the year here, so that should be fun. I get to start getting to know my new host family, and my new town starting on Saturday. That´s all.

My work plus camionetta fun...

It's been a while...lets see how well I can sum up the last few weeks. Time does weird things right now. It feels like I've been here for six months, but it's only been two. At the same time certain weeks fly by. This week is going to be an interesting one to follow, time-wise. I think it's going to drag on because there are exciting things to wait for, but if we find out that we have to give a 2-hour lesson to our teachers this week, that may speed up the process. The thing is, on Tuesday we find out who our partner is going to be for the next two years, and on Friday we find out where we're going to be going for the next two years, and who's going to be nearby.

I don't think I explained this yet, so I probably better now. My program is called Healthy Schools. It is currently in the process of changing, because the old program wasn't working fast enough for our liking. The idea of the program is to install healthy habits into the elementary school kids all over the country so that when they are adults they will be practicing basic healthy hygiene and eating habits that will help their children thrive. So we work in schools to get teachers to teach lessons on health that get kids practicing basic healthy habits like hand-washing and teeth-brushing. The problem is that the program has been active for 10 years and at this point about 100 schools have become "certified healthy" meaning that they have changed their teaching habits and created the infrastructure in the school to support having healthy kids. The goal is to change all the schools, but there are something like 18,000 in the country, so if we kept working at the rate we have been, it would take a really long time. So, they decided to change the program.

There are now 3 phases. Phase 1 is the way that it has been for the last 10 years: one volunteer in a town working with 2-4 schools, very hands on in all the schools. This is the last cycle of this phase, in 2 years there will no longer be volunteers doing this. Phase 2: two volunteers working with a school district which has 20-30 schools, but putting much more of the emphasis on the fact that the school directors and teachers need to be doing most of the work. Phase 2 volunteers visit each school once or twice a month and don't really teach the kids at all, only the teachers and the school directors. Phase 3: two volunteers working with a whole state (like Connecticut or Florida, only much smaller because we're in Guatemala) with 30-40 schools. This is the least hands-on program, and the one that seems to have the most support from the Guatemalans who are getting it. The volunteers work with the superintendents of the districts in their state, and each superintendent picks their 2 best schools to have the volunteers work with. The idea is to change the schools that are going to be easiest to change first, to use as an example for the others. Also, to have the superintendents learn everything that we know, so that they can do our jobs, because ideally in a few years they won't need us anymore.

Okay, sorry about the length of that explanation, but that's what I'm doing now...Oh! I'm either in Phase 2 or 3, I'll find that out on Tuesday as well... There are 4 people in Phase 1, 19 in Phase 2, and 4 in Phase 3. The Phase 1 people self-selected a month ago. So anyway, the point is that I'm going to have a partner, and I find out who it will be on Tuesday.

New topic. We're supposed to give a lesson to the teachers on effective teaching techniques for some health-related topic this week. This may happen, but we'll see. The problem is that they were on strike a couple weeks ago, and so we haven't been there for 3-4 weeks, and they have no idea that we're supposed to be teaching them. So we'll see. Either way is fine with me as long as my group is prepared.

I'm sure you remember my description of the public buses here, and if not just scroll down a bit and you can read it, but some things have happened on them recently that I think deserve to be mentioned. They are still as crazy as ever, and as full as I described, but I did count the other day and I think that the maximum people that I've seen on one was probably closer to 85 than over 100. Still pretty crazy when you think that the maximum capacity is supposed to be 65 elementary school kids... But anyway, so the first thing that happened to me is that I fell...on a guy's face. I was standing up because of course in my jeans-that-are-actually-long-enough-for-my-legs the pockets are tiny and I can't put my hand in them when I'm sitting down, so I have to stand up to get the money to pay for myself. So I was standing, leaning my butt against the side of one of the seats to keep from falling, when the driver took a turn really hard and my butt slipped off the metal top part of the side of the seat. I fell completely onto the guy I had been sitting next to, with my butt directly on top of his face (it's a symptom of me being unbelievably tall here that my butt ends up close to people's faces a lot, but never this close...). We're talking about all my weight on his face. I slid off his face and onto the seat and apologized, and he laughed and...got up and left the bus immediately. All the people behind me were laughing pretty heartily, which was definitely deserved.

The second note-worthy event happened on my way to this little town in the department (state) of Alta Verapaz. I got sick from some food during an earlier part of the trip, and had thrown up in a restaurant bathroom in Coban, the capital. Unfortunately we had a two hour ride from Coban to our town. We were in a little mini-bus thing that is like a 15 passenger van, but with 25 people crammed into it. It's called a "coaster". Anyway, I was sitting one seat away from the window and sweating from the people and the effort of stopping myself from crapping my pants and vomiting at the same time... I asked the woman by the window if she could open it for some air, but she said that the air was giving her a headache. When I couldn't take it anymore I asked her to switch seats so that I could have a little air, and I told her it was because I didn't want to throw up on the bus. Unfortunately for both of us, that didn't quite work out... We switched spots, and I cracked the window, and the breeze felt like heaven on my face. It evaporated all the sweat on my face, which made me cold, so I closed the window, and started feeling sick again so I re-opened the window. It went on like this for about 35 minutes until my body couldn't take it anymore and I threw up. A lot. Fortunately I had the foresight after my adventures in the restaurant bathroom to carry a bag on the bus with me, so I didn't make a mess, but I did make a smell, and it wasn't a good one. The poor woman who had switched places with me spent the next hour of the trip with her face covered with part of her shirt. I then reverted to the age of 6 and started asking, "How much longer?" every 5 minutes or so to the volunteer who was taking us to his house. When we got there I tried not to bump anyone with my warm bag of vomit, but I don't think that I succeeded considering that there were 8 people I had to climb over to get out. So yeah, that was my low point so far...but look at the pictures I'm going to post of the place we were and you'll understand why I can say that the trip was really pretty awesome despite my sickness.

After that this last thing is pretty minimal, so I'll try to stop being so verbose. On the way back from Alta Verapaz we were almost home and were on a really really full bus. By some miracle I was sitting down as the third person in a seat, and of course there were 3 people in every seat. The only thing unusual about this situation was that the alignment of the people standing in the aisle was such that a man in the aisle was sitting on my arm. Strangely it was that moment that inspired me to write all of these travel moments in my blog. There is something about have a man's butt resting on your arm for 20 minutes without it being weird that is just a little weird. It wasn't his fault, he couldn't move, and my arm was just in a perfect place to support him, but it was strange. I realized in that moment that it was actually probably weird for him too, because only a giant like me would have arms in the right place to be supporting his butt. Normal Guatemalan's heads are at the level of my arms on the bus, so normally there's more of the butt-to-face issue than the sitting-on-arm issue. I would argue of course that the latter is less awkward, but it's all about what you're used to. Anyway, once my legs fell asleep I offered the seat to a standing woman and spent the rest of the trip in my more accustomed, butt-above-but-soon-to-be-falling-on-your-face mode.

Back

Alright, so we had a week of training. It was fun. Hmm... A lot of time spent with the other trainees, which was nice. Got to get to know people that I didn´t really know before. We spent the first half of the week in Totonicapan, and the second half in Tecpan. I know that means pretty much nothing to you, but that´s the logistics.

We spent our time in schools for the most part. On Tuesday since it was Marti Gras, there was a festival at school instead of class, so we kind of just watched and had confetti thrown at us by the kids. They were a little aggressive with some of it. One trainee ended up with her face covered in silver paint, and her hair filled with confetti and glitter. A girl in a different group got a real egg smashed on the back of her head... It was a little crazy, but it was all in good fun (I don´t think the egg girl will appreciate that I wrote that, but it´s the truth).

We got a lot of information about what we are going to be doing, which I would explain now, but I don´t want to spend the money to write it while I´m in this cafe, so you guys can just theorize, and then see how close you can get.

That´s all for now, have a great week.

Big Week

Alright, short post. This next week is Field Based Training, which is the most important, and exhausting week of training. Thus I won´t be posting.

I forgot to mention that a couple weeks ago we watched El Norte, so that was weird...

Today a butterfly landed on my hand while I was cutting my finger nails, that was also pretty weird. Then my madre told me that cutting your finger nails when you have a cold is bad luck here (I have a cold, by the way), and butterflies are actually a bad sign too, so we´ll see how the day goes. I´m optimistic about it...

I gave my presentation on Friday, and it was fine. I forgot some things, and I said some thing incorrectly (for example, I tried to tell them to raise their hands when they had an answer, but I didn´t quite get it right, and they all raised their hands at the same time).

I guess that´s all for now.

Happenings

We started working in schools last week. It was a little crazy. I felt kind of at home during recess, though. The boys played a nice game of full-contact basketball that involved somewhere in the vicinity of thirty boys, all under the age of 11. There was one kid with an orange hat who all the other kids deemed "the one who will be destroyed if he has the ball." And he liked it... I guess there's something enjoyable about being tackled onto cement by a group of ten large boys. Anyway, for my old 8th grade crowd, this type of game is old news. I wonder if any of those kids will get a scar as cool as the one that I got from the large Korean guy during that game.

Last weekend we got to watch a traditional Mayan ceremony in Iximche, which is a Mayan ruin. It was really interesting to see all the symbolism and things that they still have. Plus we got to put stuff on a fire, which I always enjoy... In realidad it was a wonderful experience, and left me feeling peaceful and pensive, which I like a lot.

This week we have to do 30 minute presentations to a class during school about something health-related. I'm probably doing mine on hand-washing. It'll be interesting to see how much Spanish I can speak when I'm standing in front of a class of 25 kids...

Next week we're going on a trip for the whole week, starting Sunday, that's called Field Based Training. We're going to be working in schools with volunteers who are currently doing our project. It'll be the first time that we really get to see what we'll be doing for the next two years. Plus it's a field trip...