Chequenes, Soccer, chicken anatomy, Chiquimula, Los Jobos Feria

I forgot to write about something crazy: Chequenes. Towards the beginning of the rainy season at the beginning of June, there is this phenomenon that these flying bugs, kind of like large juicy ants with wings, fall from the sky in the wee morning hours. There is all kinds of excitement because people collect them and cook ’em up and eat ’em. So back in the beginning of June, I got a phone call from one of my co-workers around 4:45 in the morning. I grumpily answered thinking he was just messing with me or something, and he told me to come down to the soccer field quickly where the chequenes were falling. Really not wanting to get out of bed, but figuring this may be a once in a lifetime opportunity, I made my way down there. There were various people out in the streets positioned under the streetlights for when the bugs fell they put them in plastic sacks. I met up with my coworkers and helped with the collection. They swirl around the street lights in swarms, and then one by one they just sort of fall and land on the ground where you can pick them up by their wings. We collected enough to fill about one third of a grocery sack (that’s a lot). We got a lady who works at the muni to prepare them for us, removing the wings and legs, cleaning them, and the toasting them with lime and salt. Then we got a bunch of tortillas to pile them onto and snacked on them right there in the office (this was when my cousin was visiting and she got in on it too). They actually taste pretty good once you get over the idea of what you are eating. They have a soft crunch and full salty flavor. I wouldn’t want to eat a ton of them, but the experience was intriguing.

So out of the blue all of a sudden there was an organized women’s soccer tournament in El Chol. There are four teams: two from the middle school, one from the high school, and one of teachers. I asked permission to play with the teachers and last Saturday I played with them for the first time. We won our game 1-0 against one of the middle school teams, and I made the winning goal! It’s not the highest level of competition I've ever played with, but we have a good time and it’s so nice to be playing full field real soccer games where I feel like I fit in. There were lots of people there cheering us on, and cheering me on specifically telling me to score (I was playing right forward the first half, and center forward the second half when I scored). It was cool to see the little girls that I coach there watching the game and getting into it.

It’s cute…the girls at my house ask me everyday if we’re going to have practice that day (we practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays). I think that half the girls show up with at least one article of pink clothing. It takes a ton of energy for me to run these practices. There are like 30 girls now and I have to yell loudly to get their attention on the field. Twice now during our practices, a bull has run onto the field, sending all the girls screaming and running. Two men quickly appear, one on a motorcycle and one on foot with a lasso to try to get control of it. Only in Guatemala…that was something I never had to deal with in when I was coaching with Skyhawks. There is such a huge difference between the boys and the girls…when I watch the boys their age play, I am blown away by how good they are and what a good touch on the ball they have. With the girls right now I’m working on not having them stop the ball with their hands. Obviously there has been a huge difference in the ways the boys and girls are brought up and encouraged.

The summer of visitors continues. Two friends from the states that are volunteering in El Salvador came to El Chol to visit me for a weekend. We had a good time hanging out and catching up. The señora brought us tamales, as she does often, for us to eat. We went on some walks around town, they came to my soccer game, and we ate churrascos (tasty grilled meat) from a cart on the street run by a kind older gentleman.

At work the other day we had a great walk down memory lane together watching YouTube videos of cartoons from the 1980´s that we shared in common in our childhood like Transformers, Captain Planet, and Power Rangers. I love it when you find the little things in common.

So the other day I came home for lunch and the señora at the house was standing at the pila cleaning chicken parts. She often is dealing with chickens, casually carrying them around by the neck, about to be killed or recently killed, like it ain’t no thang. I greeted her and asked her with curiosity about what she was working on. She then proceeded to give me a fascinating lesson on the anatomy of a chicken. Back in high school biology we had dissected cats and the organs of other various animals so I had sort of seen this stuff before, but never so casually. She instructed me on the liver, the kidneys, the heart, the lungs, among other parts. She showed me fully formed egg that hadn’t been laid yet and put it aside to eat. I don’t know why, but it seemed weird to me to eat an egg that hadn’t been laid yet and she joked that it was as fresh as they come, which I suppose is true. There was the canal where the eggs pass down with 6! yolks increasing in size from one about the size of a marble to the fully formed egg. It’s crazy to see how they are formed and to look at such an everyday common object in a different way. The stomach was also really cool, she rinsed out everything that had been inside, full grains of corn and a bunch of pebbles. She scraped the toughness well with a knife, which made a loud rasping sound and told me how they were going to eat it. I guess my fascination with the whole process shows that I didn’t grow up on a farm.

I’m happy with the progress of my English class. Right now I have 12 students which is perfect cause you can still do group activities, but I can give them much more individualized attention. Their pronunciation is getting a lot better and their vocabularies have improved quite a bit. We’re almost half way through the materials that I have.

The other weekend a few of us went to visit a fellow volunteer working out in the eastern part of the country in the department of Chiquimula. It’s a bit of a different world out there. The buses first of all are actually really nice with comfy seats, TVs, and air conditioning! The craziest thing was that the ayudante came around to collect trash, which is rather revolutionary since most people just throw their trash out the window without a second thought. In general the people out east are much less conservative and everyone speaks with rather vulgar words. There are hardly any indigenous people and cowboy boots are common. And it’s really hot. We had a fun time all hanging out together on my friend’s patio all day long doing nothing but eating yummy Indian food that she cooked for us, chatting, and reading People and Newsweek magazines. At night we piled into a pickup and went to some hot springs with some of her friends from town (it’s too hot to go during the day). On the way back home on the usual rickety Chol bus, there was a lady who had a basket full of baby chickens that was covered with a cloth. As we were going along, one of the chicks somehow fell out of the basket and hit a little kid on the head, which I found quite hilarious. I also had the bad luck of sitting in the one seat where the window wouldn’t go up while it was pouring down rain. The water came in in droves and got me quite soaked.

It was the feria in one of the rural communities of El Chol, in the aldea Los Jobos. That is the community where the three teachers that I live with teach in, so there were quite involved with the planning of the event. All week long there were activities such as the crowning of the queen of the feria, soccer games, cattle sales, rifle competitions, etc. On Saturday I went with my site mate for the dance where they brought in a live band. We caught a ride in a pickup truck after waiting forever. The road going the 12 km out there is terrible and there were like 20 of us all crammed in standing up in the back of this truck trying to hold on as we bumped along the horribly potholed dirt road under the starry night sky. The truck kept losing power on the uphills with so much weight in it and everyone would have to get out and walk up the inclines. We made it out there in time to grab some food, walk around and soak in the atmosphere. The dance was lots of fun and typical of community dances here. All the mothers attend with their little kids to keep an eye on their adolescent daughters. So it’s super hot and suffocatingly stuffy, and all the moms and sitting in chairs along the sides. There’s always way more guys than girls and the majority of them are drunk. It makes for quite the interesting ambiance. You wait for a guy to ask you to dance (not that you have to wait long with the favorable ratios), so we danced with a few people that we knew. But we didn’t want to keep telling no to the random drunks, so my site mate and I ended up just dancing together the two of us like we would in the states, but is really weird here. So we usually get started at a lot just for looking different, but dancing together drew way more attention. It was rather amusing.

So my training group has been in country almost a year now and just recently we had our first person go home. He´s a good friend of mine and was just done being here and ready to go back and start grad school. I made a quick trip to get together in Antigua with a group of us to say goodbye. Our training group is really close, so it’s hard and sad to see somebody go home. We’re gonna miss you big guy.

The soccer tournament is going well and really fun, even though we lost our second game 0-1. Everyone kept cheering and asking where my goal was…sadly I couldn’t please them. We played against the high school team and they scored in the last minute.

Last Sunday was 14th David’s birthday, one of the kids related to the family. We had a little party compete with tamales, coffee, and cake. I got him a pirated DVD Ironman, which he was quite happy about.

Mmm…the other day was a typical good day…a beautiful bike ride in the morning sunshine, a tranquil day at work, soccer practice with the girls in the afternoon, chatting and joking with the family when I got home, and a nice quiet evening alone at home making a pineapple curry stir fry with fresh local veggies, baking an apple pie, and drinking warm milk as I finished the second season of Scrubs on DVD. I went to bed quite satisfied and so happy to be where I am.