MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!! I had an excellent Christmas on the beach on the Pacific Coast in the small sleepy town of Monte Rico. It was a great vacation, but didn´t feel like Christmas at all. We spent four days lounging in hammocks, sipping fruity beverages, reading, and splashing in the waves. I went with a fun group of other volunteers and we all kept each other in good companty while being away from our families, many of us for the first time. We made an awesome meal Christmas eve night of a couple roasted chickens, mashed potatoes, beans, and salad. There was some really intense Catch Phrase playing that occurred as well. At midnight the town exploded in fireworks and general festivity. We walked through the streets of the town trying to avoid getting caught in the cross fire of young children setting off firecrackers. There was music and dancing in the central park but most men asking to dance were too drunk to barely stand up. We spent a significant portion of the warm night sitting on the beach lit brightly by the full moon listening to the waves and soaking it all in. It was most different Christmas that I´ve ever spent, but it was really nice.
The beaches are dark sand from volcanic rock and its too hot to walk on during the day. The waves were really powerful and really tumble you about but the water is so delightfully warm and its hard to believe that its the same ocean from the Washington coast. We played some beach volleyball with some random Koreans that we met who could speak about four words of English and frou words of Spanish. Monte Rico is famous for its endangered turtle hatchery and we watched baby turtles being released from the beach at sunset. Amazing sunsets where the pictures can never do it justice. The colors! We took tons of pictures, unfortunately at the time I was convinced my camera had been stolen, so I didn´t take any but luckily I found it at the bottom of my bag. Whoops.
There are also mangrove swamps that we took a sunrise boat ride through. We got up when it was still dark and got into a canoe that is pushed along with a long pole. There was a full moon reflecting off the water. We watched the sun rise over the sillohouttes three volcanoes that I was living among in Alotenango. Stunning. There were tons of birds flying about since its also a bird sanctuary. We watched a pair of fishermen working with a unique tactic of creating a quarentine area with nets and then flapping plastic flags over the water to scare the fish into the quarentined area. They caught a ton, including some shrimp too. I had a very tasty meal of grilled fish with a delightful yellow curry sauce that rocked my world.
Right now I´m on the shores of Lake Atitlán in the town of Panajachel for a few days celebrating new years with almost my whole training class. Its wonderful to see everybody again and this place is beautiful. It is a giant lake surrounded by volcanoes!!! How cool is that? The sunsets and sunrises are breathtaking (yes, I set my alarm to get up to see another sunrise). This is a pretty tourist town, for good reason considering the setting. THe streets are lined with tons of artisan crafts and lovely jewelry. Women and little children come up to you everywhere, including while you´re eating in restaurants to try to sell you stuff. Its so overwhelming. They will drape scarves and things on you and its impossible to get them to go away.
Last night we all went out dancing together and the DJ played a great mix of salsa, merengue, reggaeton, American hip hop and everything. I danced my little heart out. This morning we went kayaking on the lake and took in all the scenery. I just really cant get over how beautiful it is and can´t think of enough good adjectives in English to describe it. The scenery here is splendid and the company is great.
El Chol seems very far away right now as I´m on vacation, but I will return to work on January 2nd with lots of hard work ahead of me. I hope that things will pick up work wise as things get moving again with other organizations and some shuffling happens in the muni.
Well, Happy New Year everyone. 2007 was a crazy year. Its funny to think that in January I was applying for Peace Corps, having just gotten back from South America and wanting to get back to Latin America. In June I graduated from college and in August I took off for Guatemala. 2008 will probably be even more of a rollercoaster...I´m hanging on tight and loving the ride.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Friday, December 21, 2007
Chocolate Chip Cookies and COMUDE meeting
The evenings of posadas continued gloriously in true Christmas festiveness. I ended up eating for free most nights this past week with the generosity of tamales, sandwiches and coffee being offered at every hosting house. It’s quite mesmerizing sitting there listening to the chanting of the catholic prayers in Spanish all in unison monotone. I’m so amazed at how everyone has them all memorized and knows what to say and it just comes automatically. Same thing goes for the a cappella songs sung at every pitch. Everyone focuses on the lit up plastic christmas tree and images of saints on the walls while the incense burns strongly. It’s quite enchanting and I felt very Christmassy, even though I barely understood what was being said it was nice to take in the atmosphere.
My christmas contribution was to bake chocolate chip cookies and give away little plates of them to my co-workers and some of the families that I’ve gotten to know. What a task. Now in the states when I make cookies it can be a rather last minute activity to fill an hour on a lazy afternoon. Here, it took weeks of planning, many trips in search of ingredients, and difficult explanations.
Several weeks ago I decided to make them and knew that finding chocolate chips was out of the question in my site, so I purchased two bags of Hershey’s Chocolate Chips in Antigua for a whopping 33 Quetzales each…the equivalent of like 4 dollars….that could buy two nice big lunches here. I already had flour, eggs, salt, and white sugar on stock at my house. In several trips to the various shops around town I sought out a rather weak fake vanilla essence and a little unmarked baggie of baking soda. Butter is unavailable in El Chol, so I settled for a strange vegetable oil margarine that makes a poor substitute for real butter. Finding brown sugar was out of the question. After trying to explain what I wanted to several shopkeepers and receiving blank stares, I asked the women who live below me, one of whom is a rather avid baker. They told me you have to ask for the kind of sugar “that gets weighed here” because back in the day you would buy sugar in the raw by the pound, rather than the bleached white sugar that is now bought in sealed packages. Well, going back out at least the shopkeepers understood what I wanted, but most of them didn’t have it and one told me it was only available by the quintal, 500 pounds. I decided doubling the white sugar the recipe calls for would have to do.
After searching out several stores in search of cookie sheets and receiving head shakes, I concluded there were no cookie sheets to be had in El Chol, and settled on borrowing cake molds from the family upon which to bake my cookies. I did manage to come by styrofoam plates to put them on (no cute christmas pattern paper plates), aluminum foil to wrap them in, and curling ribbon to tie them up with.
Fully prepared with everything in my kitchen, I put on my ipod with some great Christmas tune classics and started mixed away. After mixing the butter, sugar, and vanilla, I added an egg, which upon cracking in the bowl, was evident that it was rotten. Needless to say I had to toss that batch and start over again. (And deal with the mess the next morning of the torn up bag of rotten egg batter that had been shredded by some sort of animal during the night). The lack of brown sugar, weakness of the vanilla, and strangeness of the margarine resulted in dough that wasn’t quite as tasty as I would have liked, but it sufficed and still tasted good.
The process of baking fascinated the kids in the family after showing them the dough and letting everyone sample. No one had ever tried chocolate chip cookies before. There was a parade of children in my kitchen as the cookies took form in my oven, which I am so lucky to have left there by the owner of the house. It was very exciting and they were all very curious about the ingredients and the whole process. Never have baking cookies been so eagerly watched. They took turns shining my flashlight in the oven to monitor the process. Luckily the oven functioned splendidly, being the first time I had used it, and there were no more gas explosions. When the cookies came out, many little hands reached for the finished product, which was received with big smiles. I took a plate down to everyone else to try as well and everyone was impressed with my efforts. I wrapped up the rest and tied up the plates with ribbon and took them around the next day to their recipients. All in all it was a fun process. Its funny how something that I’ve done hundreds of times in the states was turned into a whole new activity here with new challenges and the aspect of novelty.
Thursday morning at work was the meeting of the Municipal Development Council (Consejo Municipal de Desarrollo, COMUDE). Guatemalans REALLY like acronyms, but they’re always a bit tricky because each letter doesn’t necessarily stand for the first letter of every word, but posibbly 1, 2, 3 or however many are convenient. As I’ve mentioned before, there is a hierarchy of development councils in Guatemala as part of the decentralization process of the government. They going in ascending order from community level to municipal, departmental, regional, and national level. As I wrote about before, last week I had the opportunity to go to the departmental level one where the governor presides. This week was the municipal level meeting where the mayor presides. Municipal representatives from health, police, etc. are there in addition to the presidents of the community development councils (COCODEs). The mayor gave a review of the projects that have been executed and a summary of the year. Other topics covered were the need for strengthened parent councils for the schools and the problem of animal stealing in the rural areas. I was also on the agenda and given several minutes to introduce myself and explain my background, the Peace Corps, and my role here. It was a bit nerve wracking getting up and speaking in front of about 40 people in Spanish but it went smoothly and it was a great opportunity to make myself known and make connections with people. Several of the COCODE leaders were interested in working with me at the start of next year. That’s good news.
After the formal meeting everyone piled into whatever form of transportation was available and we headed out to an aldea (rural community) for a big lunch. Big it was, indeed. There was a whole group of women merrily hacking away at large chunks of cow and marinating it all in large plastic buckets. Everything was cooked on make shift fires built there on the spot and blood spilled onto the grass. After the first course of carne asada with beans, torilla, and tomato/radish salad I was full. Then they came around again with heaping bowls of fried pork skins with lime and more rounds of tortillas. It was quite the production. We went bumping down the mountain back to El Chol in the back of a pickup truck with about 12 other people. With a full tummy, stunning views, and wind blowing though my hair, I was quite satisfied and happy to be in Guatemala.
I decided to head to the beach on the Pacific Coast for Christmas and hang out with some other PC volunteers. I felt like I got some good festiveness in El Chol with the various posadas and other Christmas activities. I’ve had a lot of cultural integration this past month and am ready to go chill out and relax and be with other English-speakers who are away from their families for Christmas. Eat some extra ham, cheesy potatoes and pumpkin pie for me since I’ll probably be having seafood at the beach. WISHING EVERYONE A VERY, VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND ALL THE FESTIVENESS OF THE SEASON. MISS YOU ALL!!!!
Friday, December 14, 2007
More feria times and posadas
Well things are getting back to “normal” in El Chol as the feria leaves. I’m sad to see it go, since its been such a good time. A brief review of the events from the rest of the week.
Thursday was an all day soccer tournament where we sat out all day and cheered on the El Chol team as it played against other teams from other munis around the area. After that there was a big tug-o-war competition with teams of 5 people. There were two womens teams that entered and my team won! So I earned another 50 Quetzales (like 6 dollars) for our efforts. It was quite hilarious with everyone cheering us on in the approaching dusk as we yanked on the rope with all our might. It was hard to keep footing in the dusty dirt soccer pitch but we triumphed best two out of three.
Friday was a big rodeo in the afternoon with bull riders from all over the country who came to participate. I had never been to a rodeo in the US, so it was all a new experience for me. I was impressed with their skills and it was highly entertaining. There were some really good riders. I held my breath every time one of the guys fell off hoping the he wouldn’t get pummeled to death. They actually did wear vests and helmets, which surprised me since safety equipment as a general rule doesn’t really exist here. Of course there were also scantily clad women to sing and entertain the crowd as well during the breaks as they danced around and the drunk men came out to dance with them. That night there was a live Tex-Mex band that played in the market. I’m learning to follow guys when I dance since I’m not used to guys actually having good dancing skills. The rhythms are fun I danced until late that night and had a great time.
Saturday was the biggest day of the feria and all the roads in town were impassable due to crowds and stuff for sale. Some other Peace Corps volunteers came and visited and we spent the day taking in the sights, sounds, smells and spectacles of the greatness of what is the feria in El Chol. In the afternoon there was the rodeo again. Everyone gets really into dressing up for it with boots, cowboy hats, button up shirts, and huge belt buckles. I was so glad that I bought my cowboy boots in Pastores during training and could wear them proudly. At one point during a break from bull riding the announcer called for 5 guys and 5 women to come participate in a competition. Nobody volunteered. So they he called my site mate and I out by name to come down and when the whole town is watching and you’re called out by name, you have to go. So after navigating the tricky packed stands in my jean skirt to get down and managing to climb through the fence without flashing too many people, I found myself standing in the bull riding ring with the ENTIRE town watching. We were paired up with random men and music was put on and we had to dance this really awkward dance that is really fast and basically just rocking back and forth wildly. So with everyone watching, I attempted to follow my drunken partner to the crazy beat while preventing my skirt from hiking up, my hat from falling off, and my boots from stepping in cow pies (none of which I successfully avoided). I didn’t win, but we all got a laugh out of it and it was quite the experience.
Saturday night continued with a gastronomic experience of eating “gringas” which are street tacos made with flour tortillas and some sort delicious meat and all the fixins. Its quite funny to joke about the gringas going to eat gringas. We then followed those with delicious churros which are made in one giant long churro and snipped off in pieces with scissors. The fluffy hot fried bread is rolled in sugar and dipped in Nesquick chocolate and strawberry syrup. Out of this world good. We finished up with a nice steaming cup of ponche, which is essentially hot eggnog. They heat it over open fires in the street in giant 10 gallon pots that bubble and boil and smell of cream, sugar, and cinnamon. They throw in a just a splash of a strong alcohol for an extra kick in addition to the spices sprinkled on top. I miss gingerbread, pumpkin spice and eggnog lattes during this holiday season, but it was a nice substitute. There was another live band with Ranchero music that night and once again danced late into the night, this time with my gringo companeros. I think people found it funny that we would stand in a group and dance rather than dancing in pairs. But there were also plenty of opportunities to dance with guys from El Chol and from the surrounding towns. The band was awesome and had four guys who were back up singers/dancers and had amazing energy the whole night.
Sunday the other volunteers went home after enjoying a typical breakfast in a comedor of coffee, black beans, eggs, tortillas, and a fresh salty crumbly cheese that is common here. I spent a couple hours teaching the family that lives below me how to play Phase 10 card game. They got a kick out of it, although the kids had a bit of a difficult time with some of the concepts. It was a really hot day so one of the girls who lives there invited me to go to the river with her cousin and her brother to go swimming. Well, dipping since none of them can actually swim. After catching a ride down the road on the truck that had been delivering beer, we got to the same spot in the river where the triathlon had taken place. We spent the afternoon cooling off in the water and splashing about. I attempted to teach one girl how to swim, but its quite challenging in a river that’s not very deep and doesn’t really have anything to hold onto like the side of a pool. Good times though. There were lots of people there bathing, like literally whole families washing their hair and soaping up. That evening there was a live marimba band (a giant wooden xylophone that is one of the national symbols) to close the feria. I danced for a bit, but its sort of a difficult rhythm to follow. I prefer just listening to the music and watching the spectacle.
All in all the feria was quite the cultural experience. I got to know a lot more people in town by participating in lots of events. I got really good at foosball since we played like every night. It’s addicting. I’m really sad to see it go, but it will be nice to be able to walk through the streets again and not have so much trash everywhere. And it will come again next year and I’ll get to do it all over again.
Monday morning I waded through the piles of trash and the last of the feria remnants and boots being disassembled to go back to the office. In typical Guatemala fashion I am uninformed and I get there and my counterpart has gone to the capital for the day and the guys in my office tell me that we’re going to walk to a meeting. Of what I ask, and they just say that it’s a bunch of mayors from the department (like province or state level). So we get there and it turns out to be a very important meeting of the CODEDE, which is the Departmental Development Council. In the scheme of development councils, there are the community level ones which I will hopefully be working a lot with, then the municipal one which meets once a month with representatives from the communities, and then the departmental one with representatives from all the municipalities. So the governor was there, all the mayors, representatives from the ministries of health, education, forestry, agriculture, womens issues, etc. were all there. I got to meet the woman who is the representative for the secretary of womens issues for the department of Baja Verapaz. She is a great contact to have and we had communicated over email about getting their support to start the womens office here, so it was nice to meet her by chance. The meeting lasted from 8 am til 2 pm with a snack of ceviche (shrimp with tomato, onion, and cilantro) to break it up. They discussed the year in review of what the various commissions had done and the status of the many of the projects in the department. There were some interesting disagreements over various topics and it was interesting to see the dynamics of everything play out with democracy in action. Afterwards the mayor of El Chol invited everyone to have lunch at his place so everyone (maybe 60 people) enjoyed a delicious carne asada courtesy of the mayor.
I spent Monday evening scrubbing my pila clean, making a nice vegetable stir-fry with peanut sauce over rice, reading and listening to pirated reggaeton music, and arguing with the lady who sold me an extension cord that didn’t work over why she should give me my money back. (I finally triumphed and got my 8 quetzales….like 1 dollar….back).
December 12th the posadas started. This is the tradition where Mary and Joseph go around visiting houses looking for shelter the 12 days before Christmas. The very first night was at the house where the family lives below me. The preparations included making buckets full of tamales and preparing the places where the figurines would be places with flowers and pictures of saints. A group of people arrived in the evening after dark and sang a song to be let into the house. Then they prayed and sang and lit candles while incense swirled about. After about an hour, tamales and punch were served to all. The punch was an amazing hot fresh pureed pineapple concoction with lots of sugar and a touch of cinnamon. Delicious. Its a fun festive experience. I went to one the next night too and it was pretty much the same, except hot chocolate and sandwiches. Im sure all next week will be filled with them too. Its neat to get to see inside other houses and meet more people and see other Christmas traditions. Lots of stores have decorations and lights up now and its starting to feel quite festive, except for the fact that the weather is so warm and sunny I just can´t convince myself that it´s December and almost Christmas. Missing everyone during this holiday season!
Thursday was an all day soccer tournament where we sat out all day and cheered on the El Chol team as it played against other teams from other munis around the area. After that there was a big tug-o-war competition with teams of 5 people. There were two womens teams that entered and my team won! So I earned another 50 Quetzales (like 6 dollars) for our efforts. It was quite hilarious with everyone cheering us on in the approaching dusk as we yanked on the rope with all our might. It was hard to keep footing in the dusty dirt soccer pitch but we triumphed best two out of three.
Friday was a big rodeo in the afternoon with bull riders from all over the country who came to participate. I had never been to a rodeo in the US, so it was all a new experience for me. I was impressed with their skills and it was highly entertaining. There were some really good riders. I held my breath every time one of the guys fell off hoping the he wouldn’t get pummeled to death. They actually did wear vests and helmets, which surprised me since safety equipment as a general rule doesn’t really exist here. Of course there were also scantily clad women to sing and entertain the crowd as well during the breaks as they danced around and the drunk men came out to dance with them. That night there was a live Tex-Mex band that played in the market. I’m learning to follow guys when I dance since I’m not used to guys actually having good dancing skills. The rhythms are fun I danced until late that night and had a great time.
Saturday was the biggest day of the feria and all the roads in town were impassable due to crowds and stuff for sale. Some other Peace Corps volunteers came and visited and we spent the day taking in the sights, sounds, smells and spectacles of the greatness of what is the feria in El Chol. In the afternoon there was the rodeo again. Everyone gets really into dressing up for it with boots, cowboy hats, button up shirts, and huge belt buckles. I was so glad that I bought my cowboy boots in Pastores during training and could wear them proudly. At one point during a break from bull riding the announcer called for 5 guys and 5 women to come participate in a competition. Nobody volunteered. So they he called my site mate and I out by name to come down and when the whole town is watching and you’re called out by name, you have to go. So after navigating the tricky packed stands in my jean skirt to get down and managing to climb through the fence without flashing too many people, I found myself standing in the bull riding ring with the ENTIRE town watching. We were paired up with random men and music was put on and we had to dance this really awkward dance that is really fast and basically just rocking back and forth wildly. So with everyone watching, I attempted to follow my drunken partner to the crazy beat while preventing my skirt from hiking up, my hat from falling off, and my boots from stepping in cow pies (none of which I successfully avoided). I didn’t win, but we all got a laugh out of it and it was quite the experience.
Saturday night continued with a gastronomic experience of eating “gringas” which are street tacos made with flour tortillas and some sort delicious meat and all the fixins. Its quite funny to joke about the gringas going to eat gringas. We then followed those with delicious churros which are made in one giant long churro and snipped off in pieces with scissors. The fluffy hot fried bread is rolled in sugar and dipped in Nesquick chocolate and strawberry syrup. Out of this world good. We finished up with a nice steaming cup of ponche, which is essentially hot eggnog. They heat it over open fires in the street in giant 10 gallon pots that bubble and boil and smell of cream, sugar, and cinnamon. They throw in a just a splash of a strong alcohol for an extra kick in addition to the spices sprinkled on top. I miss gingerbread, pumpkin spice and eggnog lattes during this holiday season, but it was a nice substitute. There was another live band with Ranchero music that night and once again danced late into the night, this time with my gringo companeros. I think people found it funny that we would stand in a group and dance rather than dancing in pairs. But there were also plenty of opportunities to dance with guys from El Chol and from the surrounding towns. The band was awesome and had four guys who were back up singers/dancers and had amazing energy the whole night.
Sunday the other volunteers went home after enjoying a typical breakfast in a comedor of coffee, black beans, eggs, tortillas, and a fresh salty crumbly cheese that is common here. I spent a couple hours teaching the family that lives below me how to play Phase 10 card game. They got a kick out of it, although the kids had a bit of a difficult time with some of the concepts. It was a really hot day so one of the girls who lives there invited me to go to the river with her cousin and her brother to go swimming. Well, dipping since none of them can actually swim. After catching a ride down the road on the truck that had been delivering beer, we got to the same spot in the river where the triathlon had taken place. We spent the afternoon cooling off in the water and splashing about. I attempted to teach one girl how to swim, but its quite challenging in a river that’s not very deep and doesn’t really have anything to hold onto like the side of a pool. Good times though. There were lots of people there bathing, like literally whole families washing their hair and soaping up. That evening there was a live marimba band (a giant wooden xylophone that is one of the national symbols) to close the feria. I danced for a bit, but its sort of a difficult rhythm to follow. I prefer just listening to the music and watching the spectacle.
All in all the feria was quite the cultural experience. I got to know a lot more people in town by participating in lots of events. I got really good at foosball since we played like every night. It’s addicting. I’m really sad to see it go, but it will be nice to be able to walk through the streets again and not have so much trash everywhere. And it will come again next year and I’ll get to do it all over again.
Monday morning I waded through the piles of trash and the last of the feria remnants and boots being disassembled to go back to the office. In typical Guatemala fashion I am uninformed and I get there and my counterpart has gone to the capital for the day and the guys in my office tell me that we’re going to walk to a meeting. Of what I ask, and they just say that it’s a bunch of mayors from the department (like province or state level). So we get there and it turns out to be a very important meeting of the CODEDE, which is the Departmental Development Council. In the scheme of development councils, there are the community level ones which I will hopefully be working a lot with, then the municipal one which meets once a month with representatives from the communities, and then the departmental one with representatives from all the municipalities. So the governor was there, all the mayors, representatives from the ministries of health, education, forestry, agriculture, womens issues, etc. were all there. I got to meet the woman who is the representative for the secretary of womens issues for the department of Baja Verapaz. She is a great contact to have and we had communicated over email about getting their support to start the womens office here, so it was nice to meet her by chance. The meeting lasted from 8 am til 2 pm with a snack of ceviche (shrimp with tomato, onion, and cilantro) to break it up. They discussed the year in review of what the various commissions had done and the status of the many of the projects in the department. There were some interesting disagreements over various topics and it was interesting to see the dynamics of everything play out with democracy in action. Afterwards the mayor of El Chol invited everyone to have lunch at his place so everyone (maybe 60 people) enjoyed a delicious carne asada courtesy of the mayor.
I spent Monday evening scrubbing my pila clean, making a nice vegetable stir-fry with peanut sauce over rice, reading and listening to pirated reggaeton music, and arguing with the lady who sold me an extension cord that didn’t work over why she should give me my money back. (I finally triumphed and got my 8 quetzales….like 1 dollar….back).
December 12th the posadas started. This is the tradition where Mary and Joseph go around visiting houses looking for shelter the 12 days before Christmas. The very first night was at the house where the family lives below me. The preparations included making buckets full of tamales and preparing the places where the figurines would be places with flowers and pictures of saints. A group of people arrived in the evening after dark and sang a song to be let into the house. Then they prayed and sang and lit candles while incense swirled about. After about an hour, tamales and punch were served to all. The punch was an amazing hot fresh pureed pineapple concoction with lots of sugar and a touch of cinnamon. Delicious. Its a fun festive experience. I went to one the next night too and it was pretty much the same, except hot chocolate and sandwiches. Im sure all next week will be filled with them too. Its neat to get to see inside other houses and meet more people and see other Christmas traditions. Lots of stores have decorations and lights up now and its starting to feel quite festive, except for the fact that the weather is so warm and sunny I just can´t convince myself that it´s December and almost Christmas. Missing everyone during this holiday season!
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Officially a volunteer and Feria time
Okay so Im reposting the last blog since some people couldnt read it. Theres also some new random stuff throughout and more new stuff at the bottom if you keep scrolling. Sorry about the screwiness....gotta love using the internet in Guatemala.
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…my own 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. I’ve made a nice collage of all the cards I’ve received on the wall next to my bed and posted all of the photos I brought from home. On Sunday night I fell asleep to the singing from the evangelical church nearby and was awoken various times by firecrackers. In the morning there is an abundance of loud wild bird calls and various children’s noises.
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.
I’ve started giving English lessons to one of the little girls in the house who is 8. She’s really smart and really eager to learn. She comes up with all the vocabulary words that she wants to learn, especially animals and fruits. After the first evening of about a 2 hour stint, she requested a test the next day. Okay, it you want I told her. Its really cute.
I shared the box of Applets and Cotlets that I brought with me with the whole family. They were a big hit and the box was gone in no time. The cotlets were the favorite of everyone.
The whole family helped me to go buy an armoire. It was quite the adventure. The furniture shop is like 2 blocks away, but everyone came in the family pick-up. After the bargaining was done I got a beautiful handmade wood stained armoire with four drawers and a hanging space with a full length mirror for less than $100. Everyone helped to get it up into the truck and hold on to it for the short journey. Then all the kids piled out with a drawer in hand and we sweated our way up the flight of stairs to get it into my room. A fun mini adventure.
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.
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. The town’s feria in honor of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, their patron saint, is the first week of December. Thus, every activity in the Municipal Planning Office has to do with planning these activities and there isn’t much work related to anything else going on. Already the central park is filling up with a ferris wheel, trampoline, food booths, and carnival games in preparation for the festivities.
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.
Another afternoon I went with my counterpart and another co-worker to an aldea (outlying small town) for a COCODE (community development council) meeting. This community is only accessible by foot on a fairly steep winding path that took about an hour to get to. We gathered at the local primary school that was pretty much in the middle of nowhere but the hike up was absolutely gorgeous. We had to step around lazy cows and the pies they left behind. The views of the green covered mountains and corn fields are stunning. At the meeting I watched the process of them prioritizing projects for their community. “Which is more important, creating an accessible road, or making structural improvements to the school? Okay, which is more important, making the road or getting flushing toilets?” and so on it went. It was great to see this community democracy in action. The other purpose of the visit was to conduct a community diagnostic, kind of like a census. So I interviewed people about their demographics, education levels, type of housing and access to water and electricity, and their assessment of municipal services. It still is hard to believe when you talk to people who only finished second grade and for example one person who had children when one was 8 years old and in second grade and the other was 11 and in first grade since ages don’t necessarily correspond to grade levels like we’re used to.
I went around with one of my co-workers to give invitations to participate in the towns Culture Night as part of the feria. The neat part was that every house we went to, we were invited in to sit down and have a little chat inside the house. People are so cordial and nice. I can’t imagine a random person showing up to my door in the states and me inviting them in to sit on my couch. It was cool to see the insides of a bunch of houses and meet more people from the community.
Thanksgiving was fabulous. A group of 20 Peace Corps volunteers went to the US ambassador’s house for a splendid meal with all the traditional festivities. The mashed sweet potatoes and pumpkin cheesecake were especially delicious. The ambassador and his wife were very gracious hosts. There were a few other people associated with the embassy that were there as well who were interesting to talk to about their jobs. It was a day of luxury as we strolled through the gardens and lounged by the heated pool in the beautiful Guatemalan November sunshine around 75 degrees. It was great to see my fellow volunteers again after having been in site for a week and to hear about everyone’s diverse experiences so far. It was nice to decompress and compare notes of what everything is like.
I headed back to my site Sunday morning and made the trip in about 6 hours from Antigua. This week I only had to wait 2 hours in San Juan for the bus. Transportation sucks.
Okay, so the Feria is in full swing. The quiet sleepy town has turned into a raging carnival and commecial extravaganza. Everything is for sale in the street...kitchen wares, blankets, clothes, hats, tacky toys, candy and tons of food. Its quite festive. There is a giant ferris wheel that goes ridiculously fast but you get a great view of the town from the top. Im getting really good at fooseball cause we play like every night. No one works in the office this week because there are activities all throughout the day. One evening was the crowning of the princesses of the Feria where one of the little girls I live with participated. Its basically a beauty pagent with elaborate costumes, scenery, music and fanfare. Very interesting. There have been activities such as pushing motorcycles that are turned off, motorcross, slingshots, various soccer tournaments, various other races, and yes, a triathlon which I participated in yesterday.
For the triathlon I was one of three total participants and the only girl. But the whole town came out to watch. We swam in a river that was 10 meters across and one meter deep back and forth a bunch of times for a total of 100 meters. The bike was all uphill up a rocky dirt mountain road for three km. I had borrowed a crappy mountain bike from someone and the chain fell off part way through. Still, I won the bike part cause the other two guys had to get off and push. The whole time there was a car with a loudspeaker behind me blasting reggaeton and giving the play by play. They called it an international race since I was participating and kept commenting {and here we have Caty McKee, la norteamericana!{. One guys passed me on the 2 km run, which was also uphill in the mid day heat. So I got second place, won 200 quetzales which is like 25 dollars, and beat one of my male co-workers who wasnt too pleased about it. It was hilarious.
Its nice to have this week for the feria to hang out and get to know a lot of people in the community at all the different events. And its nice to not being in the office. I finally bought a gas tank for my stove and have started cooking for myself now which is nice. Although its hard to get certain things around town, mostly good cheese Im missing.
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…my own 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. I’ve made a nice collage of all the cards I’ve received on the wall next to my bed and posted all of the photos I brought from home. On Sunday night I fell asleep to the singing from the evangelical church nearby and was awoken various times by firecrackers. In the morning there is an abundance of loud wild bird calls and various children’s noises.
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.
I’ve started giving English lessons to one of the little girls in the house who is 8. She’s really smart and really eager to learn. She comes up with all the vocabulary words that she wants to learn, especially animals and fruits. After the first evening of about a 2 hour stint, she requested a test the next day. Okay, it you want I told her. Its really cute.
I shared the box of Applets and Cotlets that I brought with me with the whole family. They were a big hit and the box was gone in no time. The cotlets were the favorite of everyone.
The whole family helped me to go buy an armoire. It was quite the adventure. The furniture shop is like 2 blocks away, but everyone came in the family pick-up. After the bargaining was done I got a beautiful handmade wood stained armoire with four drawers and a hanging space with a full length mirror for less than $100. Everyone helped to get it up into the truck and hold on to it for the short journey. Then all the kids piled out with a drawer in hand and we sweated our way up the flight of stairs to get it into my room. A fun mini adventure.
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.
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. The town’s feria in honor of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, their patron saint, is the first week of December. Thus, every activity in the Municipal Planning Office has to do with planning these activities and there isn’t much work related to anything else going on. Already the central park is filling up with a ferris wheel, trampoline, food booths, and carnival games in preparation for the festivities.
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.
Another afternoon I went with my counterpart and another co-worker to an aldea (outlying small town) for a COCODE (community development council) meeting. This community is only accessible by foot on a fairly steep winding path that took about an hour to get to. We gathered at the local primary school that was pretty much in the middle of nowhere but the hike up was absolutely gorgeous. We had to step around lazy cows and the pies they left behind. The views of the green covered mountains and corn fields are stunning. At the meeting I watched the process of them prioritizing projects for their community. “Which is more important, creating an accessible road, or making structural improvements to the school? Okay, which is more important, making the road or getting flushing toilets?” and so on it went. It was great to see this community democracy in action. The other purpose of the visit was to conduct a community diagnostic, kind of like a census. So I interviewed people about their demographics, education levels, type of housing and access to water and electricity, and their assessment of municipal services. It still is hard to believe when you talk to people who only finished second grade and for example one person who had children when one was 8 years old and in second grade and the other was 11 and in first grade since ages don’t necessarily correspond to grade levels like we’re used to.
I went around with one of my co-workers to give invitations to participate in the towns Culture Night as part of the feria. The neat part was that every house we went to, we were invited in to sit down and have a little chat inside the house. People are so cordial and nice. I can’t imagine a random person showing up to my door in the states and me inviting them in to sit on my couch. It was cool to see the insides of a bunch of houses and meet more people from the community.
Thanksgiving was fabulous. A group of 20 Peace Corps volunteers went to the US ambassador’s house for a splendid meal with all the traditional festivities. The mashed sweet potatoes and pumpkin cheesecake were especially delicious. The ambassador and his wife were very gracious hosts. There were a few other people associated with the embassy that were there as well who were interesting to talk to about their jobs. It was a day of luxury as we strolled through the gardens and lounged by the heated pool in the beautiful Guatemalan November sunshine around 75 degrees. It was great to see my fellow volunteers again after having been in site for a week and to hear about everyone’s diverse experiences so far. It was nice to decompress and compare notes of what everything is like.
I headed back to my site Sunday morning and made the trip in about 6 hours from Antigua. This week I only had to wait 2 hours in San Juan for the bus. Transportation sucks.
Okay, so the Feria is in full swing. The quiet sleepy town has turned into a raging carnival and commecial extravaganza. Everything is for sale in the street...kitchen wares, blankets, clothes, hats, tacky toys, candy and tons of food. Its quite festive. There is a giant ferris wheel that goes ridiculously fast but you get a great view of the town from the top. Im getting really good at fooseball cause we play like every night. No one works in the office this week because there are activities all throughout the day. One evening was the crowning of the princesses of the Feria where one of the little girls I live with participated. Its basically a beauty pagent with elaborate costumes, scenery, music and fanfare. Very interesting. There have been activities such as pushing motorcycles that are turned off, motorcross, slingshots, various soccer tournaments, various other races, and yes, a triathlon which I participated in yesterday.
For the triathlon I was one of three total participants and the only girl. But the whole town came out to watch. We swam in a river that was 10 meters across and one meter deep back and forth a bunch of times for a total of 100 meters. The bike was all uphill up a rocky dirt mountain road for three km. I had borrowed a crappy mountain bike from someone and the chain fell off part way through. Still, I won the bike part cause the other two guys had to get off and push. The whole time there was a car with a loudspeaker behind me blasting reggaeton and giving the play by play. They called it an international race since I was participating and kept commenting {and here we have Caty McKee, la norteamericana!{. One guys passed me on the 2 km run, which was also uphill in the mid day heat. So I got second place, won 200 quetzales which is like 25 dollars, and beat one of my male co-workers who wasnt too pleased about it. It was hilarious.
Its nice to have this week for the feria to hang out and get to know a lot of people in the community at all the different events. And its nice to not being in the office. I finally bought a gas tank for my stove and have started cooking for myself now which is nice. Although its hard to get certain things around town, mostly good cheese Im missing.
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