Saturday, May 22, 2010
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!
Saturday, May 15, 2010
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...
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...
Sunday, May 9, 2010
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.
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.
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