Warpspeed

4.3.10

Our 11 weeks of training that, eight weeks ago seemed to be a lifetime, are now entering warp speed. It is unbelievable how fast the Peace Corps experience seems to be whizzing by and it scares me that I'll blink my eyes and suddenly it'll be March 2012 and I'll be headed back to the states. When I look back through the pages of my daily journal, even just a few weeks ago seem like ages past. Time is such a malleable, bending, blurry entity. I'm just riding the waves of it, slow and steady and then crashing and spinning. Oh, I love it.

Yesterday we presented our third charla, I worked with Hilary and we presented to the women's artisan group on how to be good hostesses because we're preparing them to give weaving classes to tourists in their homes. It is made to be a pure cultural experience, these women in their beautiful hand-woven ropa tradicional. They'll invite you into their homes where chickens will roam about the cement floors, you'll duck under branches of fruit trees laden with oranges and mandarines, they'll have their weaving looms set out with a rainbow of threads spilling out, you'll smell the rich combination of spices that were bought fresh from the street vendors and mixed with tomatoes and ground chiles to make "pepian", a traditional Mayan dish, they'll guide you in the woven style of making petates with long thick strands of the dried marsh grass, you'll sit and watch a traditional baile, one of the ceremonial dances that celebrated weddings and birthdays. This is what we are aiming for, to teach these women not how to do their job, but how to be prepared for having strangers who don't speak their language, who can't drink their tapwater, who are new to this culture, into their homes. So the charlas went great, we played games and were all laughing and by the end, they were piping up with ideas and answers and were entirely different women from those we met seven weeks ago, quiet and timid. We'd gained their confianza, their confidence, and have grown close. At the end of the session, they were saying how sad they were that we were leaving, urging us to be sure and visit as soon as we could.

Man, it's going to be hard to leave Guatemala when the time does come.