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...
Monday, September 6, 2010
Thursday, August 5, 2010
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...
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...
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
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...
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...
Monday, July 26, 2010
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...
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...
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
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.
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