We Gringos Will Do Anything For a Good View

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of climbing Chachaj, the highest mountain in the Cuchumatanes, the mountain chain surrounding Chiantla. It started out as a fun Saturday afternoon idea with some other Huehue area PCVs and ended in (somewhat) disaster – but an unforgettable time nonetheless! We had just left my house in the Chiantla town center to catch the bus going up the Cumbre (note photo of my fellow PCV friend below, who ended up standing next to a turkey the whole way). When we reached the destination, it was rather cloudy, but we figured that the worst that would happen is that our view just wouldn’t be as good. Well, we were quite wrong. We were minutes from the summit of the mountain when boom, the cool clouds that had just been whizzing by our heads started pouring on us. And since it neeever rains in December, we were far from prepared. Three of us found ourselves falling behind the others, since we were trying not to fall on the slippery rock and mud, and when we reached near the bottom, we realized we were lost. In the Cumbre. Where houses and people are few and far between. So, we continue down some muddy roads, as it continues to rain and then begins to hail, trying to figure out how to get back to the main road. We finally approach a house where someone was home, and this nice old lady points us in the direction that we wanted to take. I waited thirty minutes for a micro, and an hour later was back home, still soaking wet. It was about an hour and 5 cups of hot chocolate before I felt completely defrosted, but it was definitely a Saturday afternoon that I won’t ever forget. And I really do look forward to hiking Chachaj again on a clear day – I hear the view from above is spectacular!

This past week was Christmas, and I must admit that I did not have the best holiday. First, I was feeling homesick and missing my family. And my plan to celebrate with my host family did not quite work out. See, I live in an apartment within the property of an elderly couple. My host mom/landlady is totally sweet, but half deaf and somewhat “losing her marbles”, so to say. Before the holiday, I had joked that I should remind them that they invited me to spend Christmas, but in reality I should have acted on that, because they changed their plans last minute and forgot to tell me. So, I spent some time with them on Christmas Eve and then was pretty much flying solo on Christmas Day. I did enjoy some 12:00 midnight fireworks on Christmas Eve and spent most of Christmas Day reading and watching DVDs, so it wasn’t the end of the world. And the next day, when the family returned to Chiantla, I had a nice three-hour lunch with them that made me feel a lot better. But thanks regardless to all my family and friends back home who wished me happy holidays and sent me fun surprises in the mail :)

Two days prior to Christmas, the municipality had its annual party, which was an interesting experience. The lunch for the 200 muni workers started very “hora chapin”, about two hours late, and they brought out bottles of rum before they served the food. I was staving at this point, and that rum hit me pretty hard. But it came in handy when I won the raffle and had to go up to the mic and give a mini speech in front of everyone! It was pretty terrifying but worth it for the awesome plastic sippy cup and Tupperware container that I won.

A few days after Christmas, this really nice couple in my town who are great community leaders invited my counterpart and me to participate in the annual donation delivery that they do through their church. This year, the church had selected a community of Chiantla that is high up in the mountains and really difficult to access. Going up the road to the Cumbre, sitting on bags of corn and stuffed animals, was a treacherous adventure. We were in the back of a very old pickup, which was completely stuffed and quite low to the ground because of the heavy load. Halfway up, on a particularly steep uphill, the truck got kind of tired and we started rolling backwards. While my life began to flash before my eyes, luckily one of the guys in the truck was a little faster to think on his feet and jumped out to quickly put some large stones under the back tires. This literally happened six more times before finally reaching our destination, but by then I was getting accustomed to the feeling (not really, but I didn’t freak out quite as badly). The drive took about three hours, one and a half of which was on a very rocky unpaved road, but it was really beautiful. This community up over the mountains looked somewhat like how I’d picture Scotland to look – lots of herds of sheep, really green land, few trees, weird giant rocks sticking out everywhere. The sky was gray and misty the whole time because we were literally at cloud level. There were about 150 people waiting for us when we arrived in the community and we immediately began sorting the trashbags of donated items – beans, corn, clothing, shoes, toys, etc. I was put in charge of the little boys’ clothing, which was really fun. Some of the kids would cry when separated from their mothers and forced to come over to my area where I gave them pants, a sweater, and a t shirt, but they always left with a huge smile and very confused look as to who is this stranger with white skin and light brown hair who just shoved a “Grandma Went to San Antonio, Texas and Brought Me Back This T-Shirt” shirt into my hands? Flat out donations do not quite fit into my definition and goal of sustainable development, but it is without a doubt incredibly gratifying to hand out clothes, food, and toys to people who literally have one pair of shoes.

I am excited that in addition to Becca coming in late March, my parents also just booked their tickets for either that same month. I can’t wait to show all my visitors my beautiful town and experience some other parts of the country with them!

Wishing all my friends and family a very happy and healthy Año Nuevo!

Pushing the loaded truck up the hill

The kids in the back of the truck happy with their new toys. Although they thought "Barnes & Noble" was a strange name for the teddy bear
Apparently the whole West Virginia Mountaineers team decided to donate their shirts, lucky for the men in Tunimá Grande
With my mountain of clothing for niños
Line of families waiting to receive their donations

With my colleague Gloria and our Christmas baskets from the muni
Red and green rice crispie treats, my christmas gifts to people in my town
Before the hike/pouring rain began
Barrett with the turkey on the bus

Video clip - the cloud whizzing past us on our hike

I’ve been in my site for a month and a half now, and there's definitely not one specific emotion to describe how I feel here. Every day, I see or experience something new, beautiful, gross, challenging, mind-opening. I’ll describe one of my early morning runs from last week as an example:

I met Don Manuel outside my house at 6:15 and we begin running up my street on a new route that he is showing me. We then started up a very large hill that leads to the Cumbre (summit) of the surrounding mountains.
Beautiful- The view from even a short distance uphill was spectacular, looking down on my town and even further down on the city of Huehue covered in a layer of clouds and surrounded by more mountains.
Gross- The exhaust coming out of the trucks and buses that whizzed by. This is something unavoidable on all streets in all parts of Guatemala and one becomes accustomed to holding their breath when the camionetas drive by, but gasping for oxygen while 2000 meters above sea level and running up a mountain, I couldn’t help but breathe in the disgusting exhaust fumes!
Challenging- Seeing a large goat with its limbs tied together, on top of a microbus as it headed up the Cumbre. The microdrivers show no mercy even when there’s 30 people packed into a space designed for 15, and the situation was no different with this live goat on top of the vehicle as the driver ignored the speedbumps and sharp turns. The awful sounds that the goat made and just seeing it on top of the bus made me feel so sad and sorry for it, despite knowing it was to become a good meal for someone, it is still something that is hard to look at and accept in a certain sense.
Mind-opening- A woman breastfeeding her baby in the back of a crowded pick-up truck. The candidness with which women breastfeed in Guatemala is something that surprised all of us upon arrival to the country and usually never surprises me anymore, except that this particular woman was so squished into this truck and managing to hold on and feed her baby at the same time. Quite impressive.

The month of December has actually been rather busy, which is surprising because all PCVs warned us that not a single thing gets accomplished during this month, as everyone is either mentally or physically on vacation and preparing for the holidays. I’ve kept occupied by working with my office on the 2010 Annual Plan, which will include some exciting projects and initiatives, like voter registration campaigns and medical missions, as well as starting up my English classes, and helping another PCV with a kids’ environment camp in her site.

I’ve only done a few English classes so far, but the turnout of interested students has been really good and it’s actually been really fun. As I wrote earlier on, teaching English was something I was not thrilled about doing, but this particular group that I’m working with (the staff of a youth development NGO) is showing so much interest and motivation that it’s very easy for me to want to be doing this. Plus, I think of how learning another language changed the course of my life…I distinctly remember my first day of Spanish class in seventh grade, repeating over and over, “Me llamo Cara. Como TE llamas? Como SE llama?” Luckily I eventually moved on from the “my name is” stage, but if I had never learned Spanish, the last ten years of my life would have been completely different – what I studied in college and grad school, where I studied abroad, the jobs I’ve had since, and of course, the Peace Corps.

The environment camp that I helped with was in another PCV’s site in Huehuetenango. It was really fun to see another volunteer’s site and to help with the camp, which can only be described with one word: pandemonium. Please see the video link if you need more proof. There were 50 kids expected, ages 6-12, but 71 kids showed up, ages 3 and up. The objective of the camp was to give the kids who are now on vacation from school something to do that would occupy their time and teach them about different important themes related to the environment…one day was the forest and animals, another day was trash, another was water, etc. There were crafts, lessons, games, and even snacks related to the environment theme of the day. The kids were adorable but trying to get them organized, paying attention, not hitting each other, etc. was an arduous task. They were literally climbing the walls, stealing each other’s crafts, throwing water at each other…it makes me exhausted all over again just writing about it. Although overall it was really fun to participate and a good test of my patience :)

People have been asking me to describe my daily routine here, so here it is: I wake up at 6 and either go for a run, or convince myself it’s too dark/cold/early to run and go back to sleep. From 8-1:00, I am in the office or at a meeting or training, although stop at 10:00 for refacción (snackbreak) without fail, and then from 1-2:00 is lunchtime and I head home to eat or go to a comedor for a quick and cheap meal. From 2-4:00 I am back in the office waiting for the time to pass, as it seems that nobody really likes to work in the afternoons. After work, if I'm not doing English class, I usually run to the market to buy food, or I take advantage of the sunlight left in the day to wash clothes on my roof. In fact, I’d say that doing laundry takes up a really good chunk of my time here. To think that back in DC I would wash clothes every two or three weeks, and even then complain that it took me two hours to wash four loads of laundry! Then I make dinner, watch whatever crappy dubbed movie is on TV, go online, read, clean, etc. The pace of life here is so much more relaxed and tranquilo than in the states and more than DC especially, where everyone is constantly stressed out and running around. Although sometimes the slowness of things here can drive me crazy, I feel more relaxed and stress-free than ever before. I feel like my life prior to arriving here consisted of squeezing as many things into one day as humanly possible – work, exercise, happy hour, errands…no wonder even laundry day felt stressful!

I recently had the opportunity to attend a quinceñera (a “sweet fifteen” I suppose you could say) for the daughter of my friend’s counterpart in Todos Santos, another Huehue town which is famous for its Feria on All Saint’s Day and traje tipico (traditional dress). While women in indigenous communities in Guatemala almost always wear their traje, it is not common that men maintain the traditional dress, and Todos Santos is one of the few towns where men do still wear traje. The party was fun, with more people squeezed into this house than one would think humanly possible, and tons of tamales and meat and potatoes cooking in the largest pots I’ve ever seen. There were easily 100 people there. It was an interesting experience to be in an environment where everyone around me spoke Mam, the native Mayan language of the town. It made me feel thankful in a certain way to be living and working in a town where everyone speaks Spanish as the primary language, although Todos Santos has such a rich and beautiful culture that is unique to indigenous communities.

With the Christmas holiday around the corner, Chiantla is dressed to the nines for the festivities, with ridiculously tacky lights and decorations hung everywhere. It’s funny to see decorations of snowflakes and snowmen in a place where people have never seen snow in their lives, but I suppose without them, it wouldn’t really feel like Christmas! One thing that is so prevalent in the US during this time of year that has been absent in Guatemala – which I don’t miss at all - is the over-the-top consumerism. While street vendors are selling annoying musical lights on almost every corner, the annoying advertisements, sales, and pressure to find the perfect gift for everyone on your list don’t exist here. I feel that the reason is because Guatemalans are generally very religious and observe the holidays with more of a sense of family (and food – everyone obsesses over their tamales, typical Christmas food), plus they don’t have the extra money to spend on lots of gifts.

I'll be spending this Christmas with my "host" family (I live in an apartment on their property. We haven't had a close relationship but they are super nice) and then New Years with a bunch of other PCVs at Lake Atitlan which I am super excited for. Wishing everyone back home very happy holidays!!!

My wonderful counterpart Rosario and me with our little Christmas tree in the Oficina Municipal de la Mujer
The most adorable girl at the San Sebastian Environment Camp
The last day of environment camp, being smothered with hugs

The view coming down from the Cumbre early in the morning, above the level of clouds and seeing volcanoes in the distance. Amazing!
The boys at the quinceñera anxiously awaiting their cake
Cooking lunch in the world's largest pots
Most of Todos Santos headed towards the party


Chaos at Environment Camp...

A Chapin Thanksgiving

This Thursday, I celebrated Thanksgiving in Peace Corps Guatemala style! A while back, my friends and I decided that I would host Thanksgiving in my site, due to my larger living quarters and proximity to the city of Huehuetenango (Huehue – “way-way”). Slowly, the numbers grew, and my Thanksgiving ended up with 11 other PCVs from the department of Huehuetenango and 1 from the neighboring department of Totonicapan. I was able to buy a frozen turkey in Huehue (the Maxi Bodega store had three. Obviously not too many people celebrating Thanksgiving around here!) and asked Doña Reina, the women who prepares all the snacks and lunches for our women’s meetings to cook it, since I lack an oven and any knowledge about how to make a turkey.

Thanksgiving Day started out in typical Peace Corps Guatemala way…first, I had just returned from a nice sweaty run with my new running buddy, and my water was cut off because a pipe had broken. Normally wouldn’t be a huge deal, except I didn’t have a drop of water stored in my pila and twelve people were on their way to spend the night at my house. So I ventured into the market, praying that the water would return when I got home. Thankfully, it did, around 10 am. Of course you can imagine how much I was freaking out, not just about not being able to shower that day, but not having running water and cook, flush the toilet, etc. on a day that 12 people are staying over would have been a disaster. Then, my credit card was denied at the store. I went to the bank, still in a panic, thinking that someone had gotten hold of my credit card number, but in actuality, I had just spent all my money for the month! (Crisis averted…kind of)

Back home, finally bathed and able to start cooking, I made the filling for the sweet potato pie, put it in a glass pie dish, and set it inside my Peace Corps oven (a box constructed of metal sheets that you place over the burners on your stove). The first time I tried to use the oven to make brownies, I filled my entire apartment with thick smoke and burned the brownies to a crisp. This time, I managed to avoid almost burning down my house, but instead I heard a big “POP!” noise, looked inside the oven, and saw that the glass dish had cracked and that pie filling fell all over the stove. But alas, I scooped up the surviving pie filling, put it in a smaller aluminum pan, and kept it cooking in my toaster oven. It turned out really delicious, and luckily nobody swallowed any shards of glass. And oops, while the pie was cooking, I forgot to take the plastic plates off the top of the toaster oven, and they turned into warped Frisbees that looked like one of those disaster art pieces in a modern art museum.

Then, it was time to pick up the turkey from Dona Reina’s house! We arrived, and she told us about the variety of special condiments that she used to baste the turkey, including the apple juice and garlic that I gave her, and then with her own special touch: wine, pepsi, pineapple juice, soy sauce, I can’t even remember what else. I must say the turkey looked and smelled delicious, but then we start to carve it with my vegetable chopping knife and discover that it is – still uncooked inside. But as we PCVs are such creative and flexible people, we whipped out the frying pans and pan-fried the rest of our turkey!

Nothing else went wrong the rest of the day and we really had a beautiful Thanksgiving. The food that everyone made was awesome, and until almost 2 am we ate, laughed, played guitar, and drank beers on my rooftop. I called my parents and brother earlier in the day, and although I was sad to not be with my family, I couldn’t have asked for a better Chapin Thanksgiving or better people to spend it with.

The next morning, I woke up at my normal 5:45, unable to go back to sleep despite having slept for only three hours, made blackberry-strawberry-banana-chocolate chip pancakes for everyone, and watched Home Alone (dubbed in español – however still a great movie!)

Despite being far from home, I definitely have plenty to be thankful for this Thanksgiving – having not yet gotten any amoebas or stomach viruses, great family and friends who are so supportive of me, and the opportunity to work here in this amazing country where I know I will have a challenging and inspiring two years and an awareness of the privileged life that I have.

I hope that everyone had a nice holiday and ate lots of pumpkin pie for me!

Thanksgiving dinner spread
A "thankful for" toast before we all ate
Peace Corps volunteers get creative when the can opener breaks
Playing cards and eating Guacamole
My Peace Corps oven

Feasting on our delicious dinner
Getting ready to carve the semi-uncooked turkey

My kitchen!
My living room. Note the fake couch/bed and concrete block shelves :)
My bathroom
My room
My rooftop; with the pila (or washing machine, I guess you could say)
The mountains surrounding my town. Note the faint "Chiantla" written with white stone in the mountain, wanna be Hollywood style
With the other Chiantlecas at the literacy training
With new friends at literacy training. Maria, the one on the left, rocked a puma jacket with her traje (traditional costume) every day
Teaching syllables
The women at our Dia de la No Violencia event
The Muni marimba playing at our Dia de la No Violencia event
March through the streets
The stilt walkers that accompanied us on our march. The quetzal costumes don't have much to do with preventing violence, but it at least got everyone's attention
Inside our community room
The registration table. For women that can't sign next to their names, they use the inkpad to stamp their thumbprint.

Although many days in the office and many evenings at home have consisted of doing nothing – literally – I feel happier with every day that passes here in my site. I feel like I am, for once, learning to relax and take things a day at a time, which is easier said than done, especially coming from Washington DC where sometimes, things feel anything but relaxed! But poco a poco, as they say, I am meeting people in my town and finding things to stay busy. I just finished my second week of literacy training (and am now officially able to teach!), which has been very interesting in some ways (like learning how to tie together the teaching of letters with important themes for women in rural areas, like domestic violence) and NOT interesting when discussing things like inverse syllables. Regardless, I’ve met some great people through the training program and it’s been a nice way to jump-start my service. Everyone is super curious about the gringa who is going to teach how to read and write in Spanish…they ask me some really great and funny questions, like why I always carry my water bottle with me. One of my new friends told me that it looks weird; I was laughing hysterically when she said that. They’re also super surprised at how I’m able to write well in Spanish, which I try to explain to them is easier than writing in English because the words are spelled exactly as they sound; there’s no “there-they’re-their” or “two-too-to” kind of rules that make it hard.

I’m also going to start volunteering with a youth association here in my town, which will be great because I miss working with teenagers. The staff at the youth association has asked me to give them English classes, not something that grabs me necessarily, but if they are asking and willing to commit to learning than I am definitely happy to teach – plus it’s a good way to make friends! And I began running again in the mornings, with one of the men on the municipal city council, which has been great. He has showed me some beautiful areas to run, although running through the mountains I definitely feel the altitude and lack of oxygen hit me pretty hard, but vale la pena! (It’s worth it!) Definitely beats running in circles around the soccer field.

In my office in the muni, we planned an event for the Día Internacional de la Lucha de la No Violencia Contra la Mujer (International Day of the Fight for Violence Against Women Day…or something like that, it’s a mouthful). A bunch of women from the communities of Chiantla came to attend a presentation on violence against women, and then we did a march through the streets with signs. It was a really fun activity, especially because violence against women is a huge problem here, and many of the women traveled from really far away communities to take part in the event. See, the department of Huehuetenango is broken up into various municipalities, including the one in which I live, and the municipalities are broken up into smaller communities. However, most of the 100+ communities of my town are in the mountains and as far as 3-4 hours away. So it’s great to see community leaders participating in these outlying areas, which lack good transportation and many basic resources.

In other news…
- I told my office coworkers that I wanted to have them over for dinner one night. They asked what I was going to cook, and I said, pasta probably. They asked me in a giggly whisper if it was really true that there is a kind of pasta called “penne” (pene means penis en español)
- The volunteer who I replaced gave me a bed, stove, and many other household things that she was using in a temporary apartment before heading back to the US. Once she left, I had to move the stuff over to my apartment. I asked my coworker to help me get some guys in the muni to move everything. She ended up getting the men, including one of the police officers, along with the municipal ambulance, to move my stuff. On a Monday workday morning. Talk about a good use of public resources!
- I opened an egg carton while making breakfast one morning and there were feathers stuck to the egg. Food just doesn’t get fresher than that!
- As you may remember in a previous blog post, my host aunt was wearing a shirt with a funny English saying on it (“my boyfriend is out of town”) Since then, my training group and I have been keeping a “Best Of” T-shirt with stupid English sayings list (Guatemalans buy these shirts for really cheap at used clothing stores, and pretty much never have a clue what they say). Some of my favorites since the aunt/boyfriend t-shirt: “Proud to be Irish” (worn by the young woman who used to babysit for the kids in my hose family’s house); “World’s Best Dad” (worn by my favorite store owner…a female one); and most recently “You’re Better Off Without Me” (worn by a very stocky guy at one of our community meetings). My friends texted me the other day with a good t-shirt sighting: “Do I look like a f---ing people person?!”…I think that one takes the cake!!
- And finally, my best friend Becca was the first to book her trip to come visit, which will happen during Semana Santa (Holy Week) in late March. I can’t wait!!

Two Weeks in Site

I am about to enter Week Three in my new home and community. Still adjusting, but I feel very calm and content here. I just returned from a quick overnight trip to Xela (pronounced "Shay-la") which is Guatemala's second biggest city. Ten other PCVs from my training group went to celebrate my friend's birthday. It was a great 30 hour trip, consisting of catching up over many beers, wandering around the central plaza, eating a big Mediterranean dinner, and dancing at a fun disco until they shut the place down - plus a visit to Hiperpaiz, a huge Walmart-ish store where I started buying Thanksgiving necessities and some more things for my apartment. Although I saw my training friends only 2.5 weeks ago, it felt like much longer, as we discussed our sites, jobs, and flea bites.

Many of us in the Muni program are having similar experiences in the sense that we aren't doing much of anything at the moment. This was something that other PCVs had warned us about, especially starting a job right before the month when all the Guatemalans begin Christmas vacation. My work experience thus far has pretty much consisted of sitting around the Municipal Womens Office and killing time with my two colleagues who work there. I have learned some really interesting things about how Guatemalans in the muni approach their work, and their reasons for being there in the first place - often having to do with political favors. I should also state that the purpose of the Municipal Womens Office is to promote and protect womens' rights in my municipality. And my two colleagues ("tecnicas") in the office do not necessarily exhibit this mission in their own backgrounds and personal lives...one of them was married and pregnant at 14 years old, and now is only 21 with two adorable little girls. She got her position in the muni because she is the mayor's goddaughter. The other tecnica is in her late 20s, and found the job in the muni after her husband made her quit her pharmacy job in the city so that she could work closer to home. I have really enjoyed getting to know these women, who will be my colleagues for the next two years, but have to admit that they are seemingly ironic choices for a Municipal Womens Office. Without over-generalizing, I feel that people in the US often accept low paying jobs in NGOs or public service because they value the mission of their work. Whereas here, these low paying jobs are not necessarily occupied with people who strongly believe in a cause, but rather just need something to pay the bills - even if their paycheck barely allows them to do that. On the other hand, the office coordinator, who is also my official counterpart, is extremely motivated and dedicated to her work and community. Overall, everyone in the muni has been super nice and welcoming to me, which is encouraging despite the lack of work.

BUT on Tuesday, an exciting opportunity came up very randomly. I was sitting in the office reading the newspaper horoscopes with one of the tecnicas, and she tells me that in a few minutes, a meeting by CONALFA (Comision Nacional de Alfabetizacion - National Literacy Committee) was to be held in the muni community room. So, we go to this meeting and I learn more about how this literacy program works: the organization trains individuals in communities to give literacy classes within their communities. At the lunch held afterwards, I asked some of the CONALFA reps if I would be able to one of those people who teaches how to read and write, even though I just moved here and don't know a community group with which I could work yet. They seemed really surprised and even more confused as to why this gringa is here in Huehuetenango, but said "Sure! Training starts today and goes all week". Given that not a whole lot was going on, I jumped on the opportunity, and spent the entire past week in intensive training. I am thrilled to be taking on this project, because it goes along perfectly with the goal of my Municipal Development program: citizen participation. How can citizens actively participate if they cannot read or write? The other reason I'm really excited is because this actually makes me feel like I will be DOING something, and something concrete that will no doubt benefit people. Being here in Guatemala has allowed me to begin to understand some of the problems in this country, and also makes me wonder how much I could realistically accomplish in two years. Despite having a master's degree in international affairs and development, I definitely doubt my knowledge and abilities sometimes, questioning how much I can really do to help people here. But teaching an illiterate person how to read and write is something that will no doubt change someone's life and open many doors and opportunities for them. As one of the trainers said this past week, people who can't read or write are, in a sense, blind to the world around them; dependent on other people and with very limited opportunities. It makes me think of the times I've walked around Chinatown without a clue of what the signs or menus say - and that inability is something that 85% of the women in my municipality struggle with.

Plus, being the third muni volunteer in my site, the last of the three-volunteer cycle, I want to put extra focus on sustainability in everything that I do and think about what my community will be like at the end of my two years when it no longer has the presence of a Peace Corps volunteer. Training people how to read and write is something that will impact them for their lives, and won't change, no matter who the next mayor is or what natural disaster comes along next - other aspects of my job are more vulnerable to these variables.

I've also really enjoyed the training because it's allowed me to get to know Guatemalans from all over the department of Huehuetenango, from many different communities and indigenous Mayan cultures. It's strange to think that soon I'll know how to teach people to read and write in a language that isn't even my first language, but also something that will make my service really unique, plus having had the opportunity to make new friends out of this experience, who have invited me to visit their communities and asked when they can come see me in mine.

So overall, things are going great in site! I'll be sure to include some photos of my new house/town and funny stories in my next blog post :)

The Next Step

I arrived to my site on Saturday. It feels very strange to be in the place that I'll be living for the next two years without knowing anything or anyone more than a handful of people in my town, where to buy food, and where to pick up the mail. It is a funny feeling in a way that Peace Corps has spent the last two and a half months training us, yet we all just showed up to our sites and feel like we don't have a clue - what we should be doing at our first few days at the municipality, who will our friends be, what we do for lunch during the working day, what our evenings and weekends will be like. BUT at the same time, we are now entering the "real" part of the Peace Corps experience - as a friend said, the "babysitting phase" (training) is over. And now is the part for which we came to this country in the first place. So with the same leap of faith that I came to this country without knowing anyone or much of anything about the way of life here, how to speak "Guatemalan", or how anything about the municipal government works, I am now here in my site feeling clueless in a different way but with the same motivation and excitement that brought me here to Guatemala.

On Thursday of last week, we had our swearing-in ceremony in which we became official Peace Corps volunteers! We all got dressed up for the first and probably only time and went with our host families to the Ambassador's residence where we had the ceremony. The swearing-in was really short but actually very nice. We each received a diploma for finishing training...which let me tell you was NOT easy. Not that training was hard in the sense that the things we learned were really hard, but just a rigorous schedule, and complete lack of independence, which was probably the most challenging part for me. We had to stick to a curfew, live with a host family, and be under Peace Corps' watchful eye for 10 weeks. But it was definitely a lot of fun at the same time. Saying goodbye to my host family and my town was sad but I felt very ready to leave. It's funny how one forms relationships with people, like my favorite chocolate fruit seller lady and the internet cafe guy, and how those small relationships make one feel so at home somewhere. But I know I'll be back to visit P-town whenever I have to go to the Peace Corps Center for meetings, medical appointments, etc.

The evening of swearing in, my whole training group stayed in Antigua and went out to celebrate. We had a blast, especially since it was our last night all together before we went off to our various sites. I ended up getting really sick - not from drinking, not from food poisoning, but from dehydration! We went to a few bars where I only had a few drinks, but then went salsa dancing for three hours in a very hot and packed bar. Needless to say, I found myself throwing up a few hours later, completely convinced that I had food poisoning, I felt so sick! How embarrassing to tell everyone, No, I am not hungover, just did a little too much salsa dancing the night before. After two full days, I finally feel better. Salsa dancers, beware...

Now that I have been here in my site for three days, I've been moving, unpacking, and cleaning like crazy. I absolutely love my apartment. It is comfortable, super conveniently located, and private. It is so nice to feel like I have a place to call home, especially after living with a host family for ten weeks. Cooking my first meal for myself again was so liberating! I am lucky enough to live in a town with a pretty large daily market, so I can buy fresh produce daily. One of my favorite things about the apartment is that I have my own rooftop area, where I hope to eventually have some fun parties, but it's also a nice space to lay on the hammock outside, AND conveniently air dry my laundry! Yesterday I hand-washed clothes for two hours - if you're ever looking to spice up your workout routine, I'd strongly recommend it!

Shaking hands with the Ambassador - I'm officially a PCV!

With my host mom Esperanza at Swearing-In

Our goodbye party at Chepe's house (my Spanish teacher)
At the pool in my friend's town...enjoying the last few days of training with my fellow trainees. Note the huge waterslide in the back!
In Mam class (a Mayan indigenous language spoken in Western Guatemala). My municipality isn't indigenous but we all went to a class for a day anyway!

Travels travels

This past week started out great, with a visit to my future site and meeting my counterpart (my Peace Corps' officially assigned coworker) and all the other colleagues in my office, as well as seeing the apartment I'm moving into. I am lucky to be replacing a really dedicated volunteer, as well as inheriting her amazing fully-furnished apartment. It has electricity, hot water, TV, two bedrooms - I got really lucky! I also got to meet the mayor and city council of the municipality. It is a really large municipality and I think that I will definitely have my work cut out for me, but I am looking forward to the challenge. My site is kind of far away from the capital city but in a really beautiful area of the country and also an area where there are a lot of Peace Corps volunteers. Eight trainees of my group of 32 alone are headed to Huehuetenango! So I definitely will be able to visit people in their sites and enjoy some visitors as well.

Unfortunately, I received news from home that my grandmother passed away while I was visiting my site. So I cut the trip to Huehuetenango a day short, took eight hours and six buses to get back to my host family's house, and flew to Boston the next day. I was in the US for three days, two in Boston and one in Philly, and returned yesterday to Guate. It was really weird to be back in the US after two months which feel a lot longer for some reason. But I'm so happy to have been able to go home and be with my family. My grandmother was a really special person and I am going to miss her a lot. Everyone at Peace Corps, both the staff and volunteers, were really nice and helpful which made me feel a lot better. An added bonus of the unexpected trip was stocking up on cold-weather clothing, since my site is in the mountains, it is really chilly at night, as well as seeing my parents, brother and sister in law, aunts, uncles, and cousins, and my friend Stefanie in DC came up to Philly for the night to hang out with me. So overall, a good trip even if it was for a sad reason. And now I'm back in Guatemala with one week left to go of training. I will be sad to be leaving all my training friends but excited for the next step - moving out to my site and officially becoming a Peace Corps volunteer!

Some of you have asked me about receiving mail in my new site - here is my new address! Feel free to send me photos to decorate my new house :)

Cara George
Voluntaria de Cuerpo de Paz
5 Calle 4-12, Zone 1
El Correo
Chiantla, Huehuetenango
Guatemala, Centro America

A week of many highlights

This was a pretty awesome week. I climbed an active volcano, danced onstage at a concert, ran a 10 K with my fellow trainees, and received my site assignment. Pretty sure that Week Seven has been the best thus far. Read on for more details… The title of this blog was supposed to be “The most dangerous marshmallow roast of a lifetime” but too many good things have happened since then to write only about hiking a volcano. Last weekend, my entire training group planned a day trip to the Pacaya Volcano, one of the country’s many active volcanoes but the only one that actually has lava flows. This is something that I’d been looking forward to since before even leaving the US, and it was an absolutely amazing experience. The volcano is just under an hour away from Antigua so it was a really convenient trip. We began the hike up the mountain, along with a bunch of men trying to sell us rides on their horses. It was very green and lush, with a nice view of a volcanic crater lake along the way. We finally reached the top, super sweaty and tired, and saw what my friend Stefanie said “looked like the end of time”. Down below was a valley of volcanic rocks and ash. It was such a weird contrast to see next to this beautiful green hill that we were sitting on. You could see the line of where the lava flows ended and where the green part began. And as we’re enjoying a picnic lunch in this weird beautiful place, cool clouds would occasionally whiz by, making everything opaque and chilly, and then a moment later it would be clear and sunny again. From this point, we began our descent into the active volcanic part; climbing over big rocks formed by the lava and lots of volcanic sand. It literally looked like we were on the moon – all black and no sign of green plant or animal life anywhere. After about 45 minutes of hiking through the moon, we reached a point where the lava flows were. Seeing the lava with my own eyes was such an amazing thing – one of those times when you just feel like you need to pinch yourself and ask, “Am I really here!?!” And it was HOT. The wind carried the hot air off the rocks and at some points we could just barely tolerate the heat. We could even feel the heat below our feet at certain places. Then we whipped out the graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows and began making some pretty awesome s’mores. Our guides showed us how to find small vents in the earth where we could stand close by without feeling the heat as much, and then we used long sticks to put the marshmallows up to the vents. It was definitely an experience I will never forget, and something that I look forward to doing again with visitors! : ) Andrew and Steph, I was especially thinking of you guys during the hike and how much you would love it. AND one of the best parts was this stray dog that accompanied us during the entire four hours. She was sickly skinny but stayed with the group the whole way, even sliding down the sandy mountain and climbing on the lava rocks with us. I fed her about eight marshmallows, probably not the best food for dogs, but she seemed to really like them! This week in my town has been very exciting also because it is Feria! Every town in Guatemala has a patron saint, and the town has a special fiesta called Feria to celebrate the Saint’s birthday. There’s been a lot of live music and fireworks and amazing street food (the best part). Some of my training friends came into P-town to enjoy some awesome French fries, pupusas, churros, and other artery-clogging goodies. There was also a really rickety ferris wheel and merry-go-round which were controlled by an operator manually pushing them to make them move. I feel lucky that we happen to be training during the time of year to enjoy Feria in my town! On Saturday evening, a famous Guatemalan band, La Banda Vega, came to play. I felt rather awkward and uncomfortable in the beginning of the night, going to this party with my host family where everyone dances in pairs, sitting to the side with my host mom. Then some of my P-town sitemates showed up and it became a lot more fun. At one point, one of the singers gave a shoutout to P-town, and then to los extranjeros (foreigners) because a lot of non-P-town residents were enjoying the dance too. I screamed “Wahoo, extranjeros!!” and the singer heard me and signaled for me to come up on stage. So I went and danced on the stage in front of about 200 people while he sang a song. It was a hysterical and frightening experience but definitely made the night that much more memorable. It was also my first time drinking beer in public here in my community, which felt weird but liberating. I didn’t feel so self-conscious about it, considering my aunt woke up on Sunday morning hungover and throwing up. I, on the other hand, woke up and ran a 10 K race! There is a race every year for Feria and I had been looking forward to it for a while. A bunch of my fellow trainees from other towns came to P-town to run as well. Considering at this time last year I was just about to run the Marine Corps Marathon, I should have been more mentally prepared for this 10 K. And even though I regularly go running here, I was not prepared for the complete uphill for the first half. It was really hard but a really fun race too, being cheered on by all these people was a great sense of community and also made me realize how many people I’ve come to know here in this town over the last two months. And the MOST exciting part of the week was Site Assignment Day!! Never in my life had I felt so much anticipation, anxiety, and excitement. Every day for the last two weeks, I have been counting down (and even began the hourly countdown three days before). I had really loved one of the sites that we visited in Huehuetenango but I didn’t want to create false hopes or expectations for myself. Regardless, in my head, I was already living there. So, it was a huge relief and happy moment when Roberto, my boss, told me that I was being assigned to this site!! Roberto had gone to each of the four communities where we Muni volunteers are training, and we were the last. So of course the text message frenzy began each time he visited one of the towns and with each message I received began the process of elimination, so I was pretty sure by the time he showed up to P-town that this site would be assigned to me. On Tuesday, I will be traveling there for five days to meet my counterparts, get to know the office, etc. There have already been two Muni volunteers in this site, so I will be the third of the three volunteer cycle of which the Peace Corps operates. I am pretty excited about this because I am replacing a really great volunteer and will be able to jump start into projects much more quickly. As for my future housing, I will be taking over the apartment where this volunteer currently lives, which saves me a lot of money and hassle, and I should mention that her apartment is absolutely amazing – nicer than my apartment back in DC. It has two bedrooms, so plenty of room for when all you people back in the states want to come visit! A bit more info about my site – it is in the department bordering Mexico, one of the larger municipalities where they place Peace Corps volunteers (population of 80,000), in the mountains, very close to some Mayan ruins, has a famous church for the pure silver Virgin Mary. It is relatively colder than other areas of the country, but I am happy to sacrifice a few degrees for the place that I really wanted; plus, more cold = less bugs! Check out the municipality’s website for some awesome pictures of my new home: (http://www.inforpressca.com/chiantla/galeria.php) Can’t wait for you all see it in person : ) The gringos after the P-town race

The finish line

Guy with some goats crashing the race

On stage at the Feria concert

The end product of marshmellow roasting
Shielding my face from the heat off the rocks
Lava!
The descent onto the moon

I ended up with a mini volcano in my shoes
Some of the group on Pacaya
The awesome dog on the mountain
Where the green ends and lava ash begins
The dog that followed us along the way