Officially a volunteer!

I'm officially a Peace Corps Volunteer!!!  We had our swearing in ceremony at the ambassador's house in the capital on Friday morning.  It was a lovely ceremony, all in Spanish, with all of the host families attending.  There was coffee, mini sandwiches, and brownies following.  I said my tearful good byes to my family, and headed back to Antigua to celebrate with my fellow volunteers.  Early Saturday morning I took a 6 hour bus ride to Xela, the second largest city in the country where we spent some time during field-based training.  Randomly I ended up going with my friend Becca from Olympia who happens to be in Guatemala at the moment.  We survived to bus trip with a family of five crowded in the school bus seat next to me all throwing up into the same plastic bag.  It was quite tragic, all were very feverish and the bus was so crowded two of the little girls kept laying there feverish headed in my lap.  Had a good time in Xela, visited a Guatemalan friend who goes to the University there, ate a yummy pasta dinner, listened to some live music with a glass of red wine, and headed out to my site at 6:30 the next morning.  Traveling is always an adventure here.  While there was no one throwing up next to me on the way back, I did have to wait three hours in San Juan for a microbus.  Evidently I had missed the last camioneta because I was waiting where they usually come, but that day there was a procession and the streets were closed and the buses were on different routes.  After almost panicking that I was going to have to spend the night there, I called my counterpart who called the guy who drives the micro and found out that he was on his way still and I hadn't missed the last ride back.  I finally made it to my site at 8 pm after almost 14 hours of travel.  Whew.  Public transport is wonderful, cheap, but unpredictable.

Yup, here I am at my new site now.  It's good so far, my house is awesome…a little "casita"  with four rooms above a family compound.  It came with a couch, love seat, chair, bed, and some random kitchen stuff.  There is a bathroom just outside my door which has a shower and a toilet.  To the side of that is the pila, the water  containing device with spaces on the sides for washing clothes, dishes, teeth, etc.  The house was sort of decorated in a way with lots of Jesus paraphernalia on the walls and a wooden cross with JC above my bed.  Other random decorations like a winne the Pooh poster that says "Te amo" and various stuff animals and other tacky knick-knacks.  But I'm trying to make it my own.  On Sunday night I fell asleep to the singing from the evangelical church nearby and was awoken various times by firecrackers.

The family is very nice so far.  There are a ton of people who live there...they didn't even know how many when I asked.  There is the matriarch who had 12 children.  Three died, and three went to the US, so six live there.  Then they all have children and grandchilden.  It's fun and chaotic but I have my own space, so that's good.  So far I've been eating my meals with them just to hang out and because I haven't bought a stove yet.  My first night there was a birthday party for a three year old boy who is adorable.  So there were a bunch of family members over and I realized a bunch of people I had met last week were all family.  Well, everyone in town is connected somehow.

Work is interesting....I work in an office with all guys and its hard to find my place.  Especially since this is all taking place in Spanish, which is good, but way harder when you're trying to work.  Using the example of another municipality that started a Municipal Women's Office, we've been trying to adapt that to El Chol.  So this morning we went around to various institutions trying to get data , such as women's participation in voting, to justify wanting to start the office.  It's slow going, and data isn't readily available, so we have to wait for some people to get back to us.  So then we decided to look at women's participation in the COCODEs (community development councils).  All of the registration information is in a big book, hand written.  So we've been going through that to create a digital database of the registered COCODEs and the gender of the participants to assess the situation.  So that turned into a whole other project.

I also adapted a letter requesting to get the ArcView GIS program for El Chol which I'll send to a company in the capital to request the program from the company in the states.  This process is supposed to take 4-6 months.  Argh.

The town is cool, very small, so it's also awkward with knowing what kind of greeting to give people (hug? kiss? shake hands?) it could be any of those.  It's also hard finding the things that I need for my house since its all confusing and stores only care specific things so you kinda have to go around searching.  I'm just trying to take everything an hour at a time because I'm in a different mood every hour, depending on what's going on.  Its hard being the new kid in town, especially when you're so different.

Thanksgiving was wonderful at the US ambassador´s house in the capital.  I got up at 3:45 in the morning to catch an early microbus to be able to celebrate and it was well worth it.  We ate a classic turkey dinner with all the fixins.  It was great to relax at his beautiful home and chill out with other Peace Corps volunteers and decompress after out first week in site. Heading back to El Chol tomorrow morning to roll up my sleeves and do some work!