Diciembre

Now for a quick review of December thus far. . .

The first week in December, I went to a CEDEPCA Christmas party in Guate which was really fun. We had a short devotional and then ate the traditional Guatemalan Christmas meal of tamales and ponche (warm fruit punch). Then we went to one of my co-worker’s houses where we played a bunch of games and had a gift exchange. I wasn’t part of the office gift exchange but they gave me a really cool bag that has patches of the trajes from all around the country. It’s so colorful!

The student centers and English classes have pretty much wound down for Christmas vacation. The centers have their Christmas pageants next week but I will be in Xela so won’t be able to go. So that means no more work until 2008. I’m going to miss all my kids!

This past weekend we went to the 5th birthday party of the daughter of my host mom’s best friend at a coffee finca. We had churrasco (grilled meat and vegetables which is a staple party food here), and then went for a hike, played soccer, hit a piñata, and ate Barbie birthday cake. Then we roasted marshmallows on a bonfire and listened to Christmas music. It was quite the little party!

Today was Día de la Virgen Guadalupe. Everyone wore their typical traje and took their kids to get their pictures taken in front of little nativity scenes in the park. There was a parade and fireworks. I went Christmas shopping so didn’t see the parade but the kids in the park looked really cute in their little outfits and the fireworks were pretty.

Tomorrow I’m going to a birthday party for kids with December birthdays at the center in Tactic and then have a youth group Christmas party at night. I am just a party-going maniac!
Friday morning my family and I are leaving to go to a quinceaños in Xela. Then Sunday I’ll meet up with the other YAVs for our Christmas retreat (also in Xela). I’ll spend the week Christmassing with my fellow Americans and then the following Sunday I’ll meet up with my host family in Guatemala City where we’ll spend Christmas day and then a few extra days seeing the sights. It’s so different to hear familiar Christmas songs in Spanish and for it to be Christmastime but tropical outside with palm trees everywhere! I’m really excited to see how Christmas is done Guatemalan style but also extremely happy that I get a quasi-traditional American Christmas via YAV.

Feliz Navidad y que la pasen muy bien!

November recap

Ok so I win the award for being the worst blog entry writer on the planet. Cuantos dias han pasado desde que escribí! Here are a few highlights of the happenings in my life since the last time I wrote:

Retiro en San Felipe
The 11-16 of November the YAVs we reunited at last for a retreat at La Finca Santa Elena in San Felipe, Retalhuleu. Santa Elena is a working coffee plantation and we had the opportunity to take a tour and learn about the coffee growing process and different social issues that it faces. We spent a morning picking coffee with the plantation’s workers. I picked 20lbs worth of berries in three hours and would have only made the equivalent of one US dollar for all my hard work. The experience was very successful in opening my eyes to the inequalities of the coffee industry and made me appreciate even more every cup of coffee that I drink. According to the owner of the farm, the best way to be socially conscious when buying coffee, aka help out the coffee pickers down here in Guatemala, is to choose coffee approved by the Rainforest Alliance. He also said that Star Bucks does a good job taking care of the “little people” so you should feel good the next time you drink a mocha latte! (I’ve heard differently about Star Bucks from other sources but for the sake of this entry, Star Bucks is good.) AND, you should make sure to keep a look out for sun dried bananas from Finca Santa Elena, coming soon to a Wal-Mart near you, they are to die for! So, in summary, the retreat was educational and fun all rolled up into a really good time and it was nice to see the other girls again.

In between the retreat and the next big event, I started taking piano lessons, did things such as play basketball and sing Christmas carols at work, and went to a CEDEPCA meeting in Guatemala City where I found out I’ll be translating for a mission group in El Salvador in January (so excited!).

Thanksgiving
I’m not going to lie, Thanksgiving was hard. I was so excited because I love Turkey Day but pretty much no one cared or even knew what it was. I spent the day being secretly envious of all Americans enjoying their mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. But then Sarah and I met for a grand makeshift Thanksgiving Dinner Extravaganza at Pollo Campero, Guatemala’s version of KFC. I had never been so thankful for fried chicken and French fries in my life! And they even had pecan pie! We both strung off a list of things we were thankful for and dug in. After dinner I called home and got to talk to everyone which was fabulous. So even though it was hard to spend Thanksgiving away from home and family and traditions, it turned out ok thanks to greasy fast food restaurants and calling cards.

Quiceaños
The fam. took me to my first quinceaños. A quinceaños is a customary coming-of-age type party to celebrate a girl’s 15th birthday. The best word that I can think of to describe it is extravagant. The party began with a huge lunch where the birthday girl wore a prom-type dress and entered the room accompanied by her 14 attendants, one for each year that she has lived. The family made speeches in the girl’s honor, everyone ate and had a good time and then smashed the birthday girl’s face in the cake. After the lunch we went home and changed into our formal evening attire (they decked me out in a blue cocktail dress and high heels). Then the real party started! The place was beautifully decorated and we were seated at very elegant tables to eat a delicious dinner (that did NOT include tortillas!). The birthday girl was announced and entered, again accompanied by her damas, dressed in an elaborate gold ball gown with her hair and makeup all done up. She looked gorgeous and far from being 15! Her attendants wore matching dresses and they all performed a dance before dinner. After dinner we sang Happy Birthday and danced the night away. I don’t even remember what I did for my fifteenth birthday but this party sure took the cake!

Then there was more work and had vacation Bible school where I scolded a kid for the first time in Spanish!! A little girl kept sticking wads of paper in between my toes and after the 10th time I fussed at her. She looked kind of upset but five seconds later she was sitting on my lap and asking where my baby was. Oh six year olds!

I think that pretty much sums up the month of November. I can’t believe its December already!

Day of the Dead

So last Thursday, Day of the Dead was celebrated throughout Guatemala and let me just say, that it is one seriously cool tradition! All week long my host mom prepared the "fiambre," a sort of cold meat and vegetable salad topped with cheese and more vegetables and on Thursday we went to a cousin´s house to eat the Thanksgiving-esque meal. It looked kind of gross in the pot but it actually was really fabulous! Then once it got dark we all headed out to the cemetery so they could show me the real fun. My family, being protestant (Day of the Dead is a mostly Catholic tradition) and the hip Ladino (Guatemalans of Spanish decent) family that they are, doesn´t really celebrate but they wanted me to get the full experience. On Day of the Dead people go to the cemeteries to clean, paint and decorate the tombs of their deceased family members (think New Orleans above ground type cemetery). People fly kites in the cemetery during the day and then at night they light candles and bring food for their loved ones in hopes that their spirits will stop by for a little snack. It´s really just an ornate way of recognizing deceased loved ones. I didn´t see anyone sharing a taco with the ghost of old Uncle Pepe or anything but I did see a huge fiesta in the graveyard! There were food vendors, mariachi bands, loud reggaeton music playing, and TONS of people hanging around tombs that were beautifully decorated with flowers, candles, and ribbons. It was really neat to see the somewhat "modernized" version of this antiquated tradition that I´d read so much about!

Attention Clemson Fans- I saw a Clemson sweatshirt hanging in a paca (used American clothing store) the other day! Clemson is world-renowned! GO TIGERS!

Compassion International

Everyone reading this entry should go out and sponsor a child through Compassion International today! Because it’s awesome! There, I said it. Now I’ll explain. . .

I absolutely LOVE my job! I volunteer at two student centers run by Compassion. The centers provide afterschool programs for local children that meet the specific requirements of the program. Basically, it’s a chance for considerably underprivileged kids to come for fun, fellowship, and food! We sing songs (even though I don´t know the words yet), have a Bible lesson, play games, do a little teeth brushing, learn a little, and have a snack. We even had a big birthday party last week to celebrate the October birthdays! So far, I’m just observing, getting to know the kids, and serving as the in-house freak show. The kids like to stare at me, pet my arms, stroke my hair, poke my freckles, ask me how to say things in English and then laugh at how silly it sounds, and hang all over me. I don’t really mind all the attention since I’m sure I look pretty funny to them (at 5’5” ¾, I stand reasonably taller than all of the teachers and some of them have never seen a white person up close before) but sometimes I have to fight back feelings of 7th grade self-consciousness. The other day a girl asked me if I have lice and then another asked if I eat people. She was dead serious. I told her only on Sundays and then had to explain that that was a joke and that no, human beings are not customarily eaten where I come from.

Eventually I will be giving little classes on basic health and hygiene. I’m really excited and am already decorating posters in my head and have thought of some topic ideas but if anyone thinks of a good one, let me know. I think they also would like it if I would check for lice and skin infections and the like since I’m kind of the resident “health specialist.” The only problem there is that I don’t know what a louse looks like nor do I know what to do with one if I find it. Same goes for skin fungi. I think I’ll have to Google it at some point. I’m pretty sure that sponsoring a child provides them with regular doctor’s apts. anyway so maybe I could just send the licey little angel to the doctor. . .

So there ya go, sponsor a child so they can come and sing songs, play games, and stare at me. I’m really happy with the work that I’m doing here and I like the people I work with a lot. Although, they do like to switch from talking in Spanish to Kekchi or Pokomchi (not spelled right but they are the local Mayan languages) and confuse the mess out of me. I tell them I’m just gonna start speaking in English and see how they like it. Son buena gente (they’re good folks).

I still like my new fam a lot and am getting into a nice little routine. I start teaching English at a library on Friday. Apparently, I’ve got 30 people signed up to take classes. I’m pretty astute at the English language but can’t say that I’ve taught it before so we’ll see how that goes!

I miss everyone and will get pictures figured out soon.

Slight Change of Plans. . .

So there has been a big change of plans and, long story short, I am now living and soon to be working in Cobán, the capital city of Alta Verapaz. We had our last day of class and said our goodbyes last Wednesday and headed off to Guatemala City. Thursday morning we had a get-to-know-you meeting with CEDEPCA, an ecumenical Christian organization that works primarily with women and is where Sarah and I will be working. I will be working with CEDEPCA as a translator/interpretor for mission groups that come to Guatemala with their intercultural program. The people that I will be working with are very energetic and I’m really excited to start working with them!

After our meeting we set off for Coban with a few stops along the way. We stopped in a town called Tactic and while asking for directions, a borracho (drunk guy) walked right into the van! It made a really loud noise and at first we were all worried that he’d hurt himself. Thankfully, he had not and after picking himself up he came up to the window and said, “Ya’ll are Japonese. Why’d you kill me?” but in very slurred Spanish making it that much funnier. After our driver laughed considerably, he said, “Señor, you’re alive,” and we drove away. It was hilarious and will probably be an ongoing joke for the rest of the year.

We finally arrived in Cobán after quite a long journey (4 hours from Xela to Guate and 4 hours from Guate to Cobán). And it is exactly what I was expecting Guatemala to be like! It’s beautiful! Very warm and tropical and SO GREEN! The city is quaint and surrounded by lush jungle-like mountians. It’s very bright and colorful and sort of Mediterranean looking with a definite German influence so the architecture is different from what I’ve seen in other parts of the country (from what I’ve read, Germans took over as the head-hanchos of the coffee industry years ago. And not just the buildings are different, some people even have blonde hair!). We did a lot of visiting on Thursday and Friday to the places where Sarah and I will be working. Along with working with CEDEPCA, my new assignment is to work with a project of Compassion International in two local schools. The project works to weigh, measure, and feed children struggling with poverty and malnutrition. I will be working two days a week at each school and also volunteering as an “English recourse” in a library on the days that I’m not at the schools. The people that I will be working with seem wonderful and are very welcoming and the kids are adorable! I start on Monday so say a little prayer!

Friday night we met my new family and I am happy to say that they are awesome! Irma is my new host mom and she’s young and cool and I also have two new “sisters,” Andrea and Raquel, who are both really sweet. I’ve met lot’s of cousins and aunts and uncles along with a zillion new people at our church. My new family and I attend a Baptist church where my new supervisor is the pastor. This past Sunday, we had a breakfast at the church where I was welcomed by some really great people. I’m excited to be a part of a smaller church community, especially one in Guatemala! At breakfast, however, a lady (who I’m assuming to be sightly on the loca (crazy) side) asked me if I was Irma’s new boyfriend and then asked me if I was a man or a woman. I’m trying not to take it personally, although maybe the haircut wasn’t such a good idea. . .

Saturday the rest of the girls returned to Xela leaving Sarah and I here to get settled in with our new lives. I really enjoyed Xela and language school and it will be weird not seeing the other girls every day but I am pumped to finally get started! I spent the weekend in a bubble of awkwardness, getting to know the fam and my new surroundings. It never fails that when I get to a new place I kind of clam up and can neither think in English nor speak in Spanish. I’ve said many a time in the past few days that I was married (casada) when I meant to say tired (cansada). Oh well, I’ve set the bar pretty low and now the only way to go is up. Yesterday, my supervisor’s husband took Sarah and I to some aguas calientes (hot springs) as a way for us to get to know the area more before we get busy with our work. It was a very relaxing day, the drive was absolutely breathtaking and I couldn’t help but be overcome with gratitude for the hospitality of my new family and the friendships that I’ve made during the past weeks, and with enthusiasm to finally begin mi vida Guatemalteca.

Life´s a Beach. at least for a day.

Ok so I´m going to try to keep this entry short.

We didn´t end up going to Coban because little Joshua was sick so we just hung out in Xela for the weekend and then went to the beach with our maestros on Monday. I was sad for Sarah that we didn´t get to see her city but the beach was really fun and we definitely needed a break. And it was my first time seeing the Pacific Ocean! It´s very similar to the Atlantic, at least in Guat. anyway. Other than our little excursion to the beach, we´ve just been trucking along in Spanish class, becoming really good friends with our maestros, and getting ready to move to our communities.

Tommorrow we are going to Yajabcu Signup to meet my new family and to have a chance for everyone to see where I will be living this year. I am so excited! And also a little bit on the nervous side. . . Jaime (my maestro) told me that I will probably have to, or at least be asked to, kill a chicken. I´m not really sure how I feel about that but I suppose I will just have to see what happens. Anyway, so we will be spending the weekend with my new host family, going to my new church, and I, at least, will be completely overwhelmed with all of the sights and sounds of my new home. That means, folks, be prepared for a really long entry next week!

Silly girl, rabbits are for food!

Many an event, both humorous and other, has occurred since I last wrote in this here blog. Saturday was Guatemala´s independence day so the entirety of last week was spent going to parades and concerts, setting of fireworks, and going to the fair. Our teachers took us to a parade Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday and let me just say, one was enough! A Guatemalan parade, at least in Xela, consists of almost every student from almost high school in the area (and there are a zillion) marching down the street in their school uniforms, led by girls wearing really short skirts and high heeled boots semi-salsa dancing with sticks that have bells on them and followed by sad little marching bands that could rarely carry a tune and were completely overpowered by xylophones. The first parade was cute, the second ehh, and the only thing that saved me from pulling my hair out during the third one was the excitement of the crowd (this one was actually on independence day and there were masses of people lining the streets and rooftops). Still, if I never hear a xylophone again in my life, I´d be A-ok.

Friday was really cool. We went on a field trip to a town called Momostenango where we visted a family of rug-makers. Their house was awesome, and very earthy and serene and close to what I imagine pioneers living in years ago. They told us/showed us how they sheer the sheep, clean the wool, spin the yarn, dye the yarn, and use this cool machine to make the rugs. AND they let us try! That´s right, I spun yarn and helped to make part of a rug! It was so cool! It´s pretty much magical how they make yarn, if you´ve never tried, I suggest putting it on your list of things to do before you die. The machine just pulls the wool into yarn like ¨Presto! There´s your yarn!¨ It´s crazy! They also had a big cage full of rabbits so I went over to pet them and one of the little boys walked by so I asked, ¨Are these pets?¨ And he said, ¨No, they´re rabbits.¨ So I laughed to myself and asked, ¨So, do you, um, eat them?¨ And he looked at me like I had a monkey growing out of my head and said, ¨Uh, yeah.¨ Everyone got a pretty good laugh out of that one. So then we we did a little shopping and ate a fabulous lunch of freshly made tortillas that were cooked over an open fire, cheese and beans. And the señora let us try our hand at making tortillas!!!! That is definitely a skill that non of us even came close to mastering during our afternoon in Momo but it was really fun! Friday night the maestros made dinner (thank heaven we didn´t have to cook this time!) and it pretty much blew our attempt out of the water. Then we went to a concert and watched fireworks as we rung in independence day.

Sunday we went to Samantha´s church and it was really cute and welcoming and the sermon was really good. It´s really fun to see where everyone will be living and working this year and it makes me really excited for the coming year. Sunday night David and Jeneanne invited us over to their house for a fantastic dinner and it was so nice to have familiar food. . .lasagna! My fav!! Yesterday we went to the fair with the maestros and had a really good time even though the rides were a little on the sketchy side. I think sketchy rides are more of a fair thing, though, and not a Guatemalan thing and kind of add to the overall excitement. On one of the rides my friend Jairo looked at me and said, ¨You have a deformity in your eye.¨ I was like, ¨Huh? No, that´s a freckle.¨ Then he asked me if I ever got made fun of at school for it. It´s a tiny little imperfection in my left eye, no cause for jokes. Maybe you had to have been there for it to be funny, but it was.

So that´s all I can think of right now. Oh yeah, just a word of advice, never tell a foreign host mother you like to eat anything that comes from the inside of an animal, such as liver. There´s a story behind it but I´ll just leave it at that.

We´re going to the Xelaju Super Chivos soccer game tomorrow. Should be fun. Then a trip to Coban this weekend to visit where Sarah will be living.

Must get going now, I´ve got a lesson in churro making.

Clouds and Ketchup Spaghetti

So let me preface this entry by saying that apparently I didn´t do a good job of spreading the word about my haircut. I got about 7 or 8 inches taken off and am now the spitting image of my kindergarten picture. I´m still not sure how I feel about it but it´s easy and will grow so I guess I can´t complain.

Alrighty, so this past week has been really busy. We have class everyday for 5 hours. That´s five hours of making forced conversation with the same person. It´s really not that bad actually and my teacher, Jaime, and I take lots of breaks for coffee and to kid around with the other groups. We also took a field trip to the cemetery and one to a glass blowing factory, both interesting in their own way. Every afternoon we have an activity planned through the school like salsa lessons, political lectures, or visiting nearby towns. The salsa lessons are by far my preferred activity and, apparently, there´s no dancing in Yajabcu Signup so I´ve got to enjoy it while I can. We went on a hike yesterday to see a sacred Mayan lagoon. It was a 5 hour, almost vertical climb in the clouds to the top of this old volcano and when we reached the top it was so foggy/cloudy we couldn´t even seen the lagoon! Our teachers claimed that it was fog but we were definitely in the clouds.

Funny story of the week: So as kind of a tradition at the school, the teachers and students take turns cooking dinner on Friday nights. This past friday was our turn so we went to a little tienda (store) in search of ingredients to make a good old fashioned spaghetti dinner. We got lots of noodles, sauce, bread, sausage (couldn´t find ground beef so we improvised), and even bought some cake mix for desert. Then we went back to the school and started cooking only to find that the sauce that we bought was actually ketchup. So being the good cooks that we are, we unsuccessfully added worsteschire sauce, salt, garlic, oregano, and who knows what else to make the ridiculously sweet kethcup taste more like tomato sauce. It was revolting. So then we added an absurd amount of garlic to the bread in order to balance out the sweetness of the spaghetti. That also proved to be a bad idea leaving us with both horrible spaghetti and gross garlic bread. So then we were left with our cake to save the night. And who can mess up boxed cake mix? We can. Soon after preparing it and sticking it in the oven we read the box only to find that we were baking icing and not cake. And as delicious as the final product was, it did´t really help to save our dinner from going down in history as a complete dud. The teachers were really nice about it though and some even asked for seconds but I think next time we should just order Dominoes.

(I would just like to state for the record that I am actually a phenomenal Guatemalan chef. Thus far my host mom has taught me how to make smushed bananas, deep fried with beans and cheese inside, hamburgers a la Guatemala and empanadas, which are my specialty if I do say so myself.)

So that´s all I got for ya. No school tomorrow because elections were today and they need a day to rest. Gotta love it!

Estoy Aqui!

Hola from Guatemala! So, writing in this thing is going to take a little more effort that I thought. Here’s a little snipit of what’s going on so far.

My week in Chicago was really busy but nice. We had a lot of seminars on safety and globalization, among other heavy world issues, Bible studies, worship, and get-to-know-you time. All of the YAV participating in the program this year were there so it was fun to get to know the other volunteers that will be living all over the world. Chicago is a really neat city.

Ok, so now for the fun stuff! Guatemala! The other volunteers and I (there are 4 of us, Ali, Audrey, Samantha, and Sarah) left Chicago at 3am and arrived in Guatemala city at 12pm. It was raining so it took us seven hours to drive from Guatemala to Quetzaltenango, which is also known as Xela. We spent the frist couple of days with our coordinator, Marcia, her adorable baby, Joshua, and a missionary couple from NC, David and Jeannene, getting to know each other and the city. Wednesday we went out for my birthday dinner in an Indian restaurant. Marcia, David and Jeannene brought cake and presents and we had a really good time.

Thursday we started Spanish classes. We have private instructors which is really cool and I think my Spanish is going to be pretty spectacular by the time I move to my placement site in October. My teacher also is going to teach me some words in Kanhabal (the Mayan language in my placement town). Did I mention that we’re the only students in the school? It’s pretty sweet. We ate the rest of my birthday cake and the teachers made me take a bite and smushed my face in it- apparently that’s customary for the birthday girl. I, also, moved in with my first host family. It’s a mom and dad, 3 daughters, and a granddaughter. They are really energetic and say I’m part of the family already. It’s a nice house, about a two second walk from the school, and my “mom” is a good cook and wants to teach me all of her Guatemalan recipes. It was nice to unpack after weeks of living out of a suitcase.

So, everything is so-far-so good on the Guatemala home front. It’s been really rainy the past couple of days but Guatemala is a really pretty country. Xela is a cute city and I’m excited to get to know it better and spend more time with everyone before I go to my town. Which, by the way, it’s called Yajabcu Signup, my host family has 10 kids, the mother doesn’t speak Spanish, and I’ll be teaching workshops on basic health and hygeine, AIDS, and first aid to women who also don’t speak Spanish so I’ll have to find a translator. I’m going to be working with David a lot, too, translating for mission groups that come from the US. That’s all the info I’ve got as of now, I’m pretty excited.

We’re going on a field trip to some hot springs tomorrow and going to visit Audrey’s church on Sunday. I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to spend the year with and I love having to speak Spanish all the time. I have a fun-filled night of journal writing and reading ahead of me so that’s all for now. I'll post pictures soon. Over and out.

On my way. . .

Well, I don't have too too much to report as of now. I still can't believe I'm leaving tomorrow! I'll be in Chicago from Aug. 19-27 for orientation and then it's off to Guatemala, finally! I really just want to bypass Chicago and go straight to Guat. I've been looking forward to it for so long that I'm about to bust! The only comments I have as of now are that saying goodbye = no fun and I hope I have packed enough/haven't packed too much.

I hope I'll be able to write while I'm in Chicago but I might not get a chance to until I've arrived at my final destination. So that's all for now. Say a little prayer for me!