Back At It

So, school has started, and things are starting to get back to some semblance of a normal schedule. I´m going to school every day, procrastinating every afternoon, basically living my life... There are some big differences from this time last year, though. For one, there are trainees in my program (Healthy Schools in case you´ve forgotten, it has been a while since I´ve had reason to mention it), but I´m not one of them. Instead they come to me and I train them in how schools function in Guatemala, and show them an example of how we work. Yesterday was the first day of that, and they got to see a pretty normal school, and some of the types of interactions that are normal for my life here. For example, I was asking the principal about their plans for their school garden, and I asked if they were planning on using organic pesticides. He replied bluntly, ¨No, we use chemicals.¨ He ignored my my attempted suggestion completely, which is pretty normal. I even said, ¨Hh well I have access to information about organic options,¨ to try to make it clearer that they should be interested in learning about them, but he just brushed me off casually. There was no malice in it, just no interest.

That is the kind of interaction that can be really frustrating for me, because it means that I have to spend time convincing that school that the information that I have is useful and could help them, and then if I manage to convince them, I have to teach them the information. That extra step is daunting because of the fact that I have 10 schools, which is why I tend to work more with the schools that come to me asking for lessons about specific health topics rather than the ones that I have to convince that health is important... At this point, though, I`m trying really hard not to make any judgments about how my schools are going to work with me this year, because I´m hoping that if I approach them all positively I will get a more positive response from them. I guess we´ll see in a few months or a year or a few years (volunteers will be replacing me, so maybe they will reap the benefits of my work eventually).

Another chapter in the story of the chicken buses happened recently. This particular experience is one that I now consider pretty normal but thought I should mention just to warn potential visitors. I was on my way home around 5pm and there was stop-and-go traffic through Chimal (which is normal because they´re doing construction on the highway there). Bus drivers are notoriously impatient when it comes to large lines of backed-up traffic, so they do whatever is necessary to get past. Normally they move onto the right shoulder and just drive past the other cars, and then merge when there is an obstacle, but sometimes, if there are too many obstacles, they choose a different option. In this case, that option was, drive in the oncoming traffic lane until cars appeared, and then pull onto the left shoulder and continue. The interesting thing that happened this time, was that we passed a police car, which immediately turned on their siren, so the bus driver pretended he was just turning into a gas station. He pulled into the driveway, checked his mirror to see that the police car had turned off its lights, and then pulled back onto the road. Then he cut off a little car to merge at the last possible moment before the two lanes were split by a barrier. It was all pretty normal except for the police car part...

Upcoming events in my life here include: the Super Bowl, teaching a high school class for 2 hours once a week until June, big workshops with all the teachers from each grade in our district (1st and 2nd, then 3rd and 4th, then 5th and 6th), monitoring projects that we helped arrange in three of our schools, eagerly awaiting a visit from whoever wants to visit from wherever you might be... There are probably other things, but that´s all I can think of right this second.