First visit to El Chol

Well, the mystery and the waiting are over....after applying for the Peace Corps in January 2007, I now know my destiny for the next two years. I spent from Wednesday night until Sunday morning at my new hometown.

Tuesday we met our counterparts at the training center which was a long, awkward, but good day. Imagine meeting the person that you will be working with the closest for the next two years of your life and what its like to make small talk, in another language. On Wednesday morning we took off headed for El Chol in the microbus owned by the muni (like a small van, but you can cram a lot of people). Like oftentimes in Guatemala, I never really know what's going on and you just go with the flow. We went to Guatemala City and stopped at a car repair place to do some routine maintenance. As auto shops are anywhere in the world, of course they found something else wrong and we were told it would be a couple hours to fix it. So my counterpart and the driver went to Pollo Campero for lunch. Pollo Campero is like the national KFC....its a Guatemalan company that is so popular that its now in the US in some places too. (My Spanish teacher joked that flights to the US from Guatemala smell like Campero chicken because their family members living there request it from home. Evidently US nutrition rules don't allow as much fat at the "real" Guatemalan version). When we headed back to the auto shop, of course it wasn't ready yet and we had to kill some more time. Well the mayor of El Chol happened to be in town, so I met him and his whole family right there. I went around with them for awhile in their pickup to run some errands with them. When the microbus was finished, we drove it about a block and it was making bad noises that it hadn't been making before, so we had to go back and wait a couple more hours. Finally we started making our way to El Chol after dark so I wasn't able to see the sites very well.

While I was visiting I stayed with my site mate, another volunteer who has been there for almost four months working in the Youth Development program. I went into the office for awhile on Thursday and Friday and met everyone. In addition to my counterpart, there are 5 other guys who work in the Municipal Planning Office, all between 20 and 23. The muni is actually pretty organized and has a long term plan until 2020. My main work goal will be to start the Municipal Women's Office. So that is pretty exciting. Hopefully I'll be able to work with some GIS and with the COCODEs as well.

El Chol is very pretty and very small. It is quite clean, has a brand new park and a small municipal hotel and market. The people are incredibly nice. You can't walk anywhere without greeting everyone and stopping to have a conversation with them. It is surrounded by green mountainous terrain and has pretty pink sun sets. The main streets are paved and there is even a post office where I can get mail directly. (Ask me and I can give it to you). The first week of December is their feria, or community festival. There are already arcade games and a ferris wheel and food stands being set up. Its a really big deal and people from all over will evidently be there and no one works that week. I'm really looking forward to it and it should be lots of fun.

On Friday afternoon some other volunteers from around the area came and visited so I got to meet them and hang out with them. We had a relaxing day on Saturday where I continued to look for housing options and then I took off this morning. It took me about 4 and half hour to get back to Antigua. I have two promising housing options, so I'm waiting to hear back on how much one place wants for rent and then I'll decide. Nothing is perfect of course, but at least there are options, even though I wish it was set up already.

So this is our last week in Alotenango and we'll be going into the training center almost everyday to finish up training activities. Swearing in ceremony will be Friday at the US Ambassador's house in the capital. I'm so sad to say good-bye to my family and my wonderful fellow trainees but excited to get started.