Here goes!

So our last week back in the comfort of familiarity was short and packed. Monday we didn’t get to the headquarters because of a bus strike happening in Guate, the city. This was great for us, San Antonio and Santa Caterina hung out for the day: we played bananagrams at Leo’s house, hit the internet café and hung in our central park, reading and catching up on journal entries. Tuesday was a bunch of wrap up in the office, last words, tips, safety advice, rules. I bought “Que Rico” which is the Peace Corps Guatemala Volunteer cook book. I can’t wait til I have my own kitchen and can cook all ‘dem recipes for myself. Wednesday we jumped around to our various towns to get a last look at everyone’s project. We had a nice little temblador, bitty-earthquake, in the middle of the day that Fife’s family had been predicting for several days and he’d been warning us all morning there was an earthquake going to happen today and whaddyaknow, they were right! We were all mightily impressed. Thursday, though, was the icing on the cake: Swearing In! Fourty-four Peace Corps Trainees camioneta-ed, tuk-tuked, microbused and drove with our familes to Hotel Antigua where we all sat on a gorgeous day, dressed up to the nines and were officially inducted into the glorious world of Peace Corps Volunteerdom! And we have diplomas to show for it! Mama Tina came with me and her daughter-in-law Elsa to see my graduation. Afterwards we took our families out for lunch at a pizza joint, Jordan, Chad, Kate and I and our family members. For the afternoon, we took last pictures around the fountain, all the women in their beautiful huipiles, and parted ways..Peace Corps volunteers, finally on our very own! From here on out we are no longer going to be babied, to have every hour of our day scheduled out for us, no more private PC microbuses ferrying us around, nope. We aren’t trainees anymore, they’ve open their cupped hands and are letting us jump off into oblivion, hoping they’ve taught us enough that these wings will carry us aloft, on to our new lives.

31.3.10
OMG. So I got here on the last bus of the day (round 2pm after many more hours on the squished camionetas) and right off the bat I jumped into the life of my lovely aldea which right now is in Semana Santa, full swing. I didn’t even get my bags unpacked before the loudspeaker call down at the school drew nearly the entire community to join in the procession. I walked with Rosa and three of her daughters and her nephew in one of the two lines of folk slowly making their way up the cobblestone calle towards the church at the top of the hill. The afternoon was lovely, clouds sat over the lush mountains on either side of us and I felt otherworldly. Well I am otherworldly I guess, being the only one with pelo rubio y piel blanco among a sea of beautiful chestnut-skinned, dark haired gente. I was passed a handful of thick grasses and followed suit when I saw the others bending them over into loops and tying them into upsidown teardrops. A group of young men at the head of the line played guitars and women walked behind them singing . We walked slow and stopped intermittently and the encargados would rush to plug the microphone into the nearest house and speak words about God and living peaceful lives with good intentions. We walked up the steps of the church and passed inside. We found our seats and for two hours listened to words from the preacher, stories read from scripture, music and song…I was exhausted but content. This was my new community and I’m here to stay.
Monday: I went with Eduardo down the mountain to the river, running clear and gorgeous on this lovely morning. We met up with Pascual, Claudio and Luis and set to work making a trail that followed (and sometimes crossed) the river. I moved monte (weeds/brush) while Pascual cut his way through the jungle-y mix. We made our way to the first waterfall and there we opened up the pool beneath it, moving tons of big rocks to create a larger area for people to ploop around in. We covered the pathway in black sand from the river and poma, white lava stone that floats on the river surface and collects among the rocks. We worked til about 1:30 and had a snack on the riverbank (bananas, pan and tortillas with something yummy in between). After lunch Pascual and I got to work on our mueble, a shelving unit made from wood boards. Professional carpenters that we were, it took a lot of trial and error. A lot! We worked for 3 hours and I collapsed into bed around 7:30pm
Tuesday: I had a lazy morning of catching up on reading and my journal and looking through some of the mountains of electronic information that Peace Corps gives us (on everything from building trails, to developing NGOs, to how to build a bottle school and more). Afterwards, around 10pm I headed over to Eduardo’s house to watch the process of making pan (bread). As part of the Semana Santa tradition, the community shares in the making of loads and loads of sweet bread. Those who can afford to buy all the ingredients and spend several days making all manner of shapes, sizes, designs and flavors of pan and those who couldn’t afford to make the bread make dolls out of trash. The dolls symbolize Judas which they parade around from house to house with rackety noisemakers, whistles and masks carrying Judas on their shoulders and demanding pan in a loud chaos filled group at your door. But back to the pan. I met Fernando, Eduardo’s brother who told me all about the oven and how it’s made of clay and bricks and lime and it’s HUGE! A big igloo-like thing that almost filled the whole room, set on a brick base. He was the man in charge of the fire and the gaggle of women to either side were working furiously, rolling out bolas of egg-yellow maza, or dough, and rolling, cutting and twisting them into different designs, sometimes adding a more sugary design on top. As soon as I offered to join in, I was donning an apron and wetting my hands with grease and clumsily rolling out bolas and mimicking the designs that the ladies and girls showed me. After we filled three long shelves full of bread ready to bake, Fernando started pushing them into the oven as Margarita or Juaquina brought over the pans laden with pan. He used a long stick with a hook on the end, pushing and placing strategically so that he could retrieve those fully baked while still having room for the unbaked. Next I found myself joining Dona Emelia, an old woman who just about put me to shame with her endurance in mixing the maza. Bent over a wooden trough full of flour, oil, butter, egg, vanilla we hand mixed for what seemed like ever, my back ached and I was just about dripping sweat into the dough. Margarita tied back my hair for me and the heat of the oven and the work was extreme. But every time I looked over at Emelia, I knew that I wasn’t about to stop! I lasted two batches and felt pretty darn good, it was such a fun time! Laughing over how obvious it was which breads were mine and feeling such kindness from the women as they presented me a plate full of the breads we’d made together. It was a lovely time, a wonderful experience. That afternoon I shared my bread with my family and Pascual and I got back to work on our mueble. It’s getting there, little by little, the mistakes aren’t too devastating and we get a good laugh out of calling ourselves expertos y profesionales. When he said we were the grandest carpenters, he got a huge kick out of me adding “in this room”. That evening we got a visitor! Neil, an English man who is touring Central America and had already passed through town several months ago for a handful of days and now is back and hoping to stay a bit longer. He, Pascual, Rosa and I had dinner and talked way past my bedtime (9:30!) and had all kinds of interesting conversation about the community and other things.
Wednesday: Went out with Pascual to his terreno, the plot of land he owns and grows coffee, fruits and harvests his firewood from. We spent all morning there, collecting and planting seeds, harvesting fruits and greens, viewing his wide range of cultivars: plantain, banana, macadamias, limes, guisquil, mangoes (no, not ripe at the moment unfortunately). It was, aside from getting eaten alive by bugs, a grand time. I heard a black throated green warbler singing, doesn’t the little bugger know it’s not spring yet? Not to mention has a long way to travel back up to the states before he should be thinking about finding himself a sweetheart! Back home we lunched on guisquil and greens we’d harvested (and, of course, pan now that there’s a neverending supply). Afterwards Pascual put more time in on our mueble which is now practically complete: two long top shelves (which we’re going to put a division in, as support), a line of cubby holes down one side and a bar on the other for hanging my clothes. It’s fantastic! Now I gotta put some shalack on it (varnish, I dunno, something to make it look pretty and keep the termites from eating it..they’ve already discovered it since the desk in my room is infested..I just killed one in my bed right now…don’t worry we’re moving the desk tomorrow..). After we finished there, Pascual had to help Rosa prepare 10 chickens for tomorrow, i.e. kill ‘em dead. Being a good Peace Corps Volunteer, I asked if I could try. Well, I’ll just say, the killing was the easy part. Messy yes, but once that was over with I had to pluck her clean (after submerging it in boiling water), even her head, then I gave the whole body a good scrub with soap. Next I cut off the head and legs at the “knees” and cut into the upper chest to pull out the swallowing tube (bear with me) and then into the abdomen to extract all the innards. Next I cut off the beak and got the rest of the swallowing tube and the tongue and put the legs in boiling water for a few moments and was able to strip off the scaley yellow skin. I cut off the toenails and added the legs to the “for keeps” pile with the head and body. I found my way through the innards and cut the gizzard apart from the strong muscle that surrounds it and scrubbed the muscle clean and added that to the pile as well as the heart and liver. There you go! Tomorrow I’m gonna eat it and, with all this written down, I’ll know how to do it again in the future. Hopefully I’ll have a few more practice runs, though, before I try it myself. Throughout the afternoon and evening Judas dolls came knocking at our door followed by hoards of masked children working homemade noisemakers, blowing whistles and yelling. Melbet and Josaphina, the two youngest sisters ran with me to the door, shoving a small round loaf of bread into my hands to drop into the bag held open by the smallest of each group. It was really a lot like Halloween but much more exciting. There was always a moment of shock when they saw a gringo come to the door, making it all the more fun. Now, with a tummy full of pan, it’s time for bed. ‘Cept I’m not tired. They make the weakest coffee known to man here and adults and children alike drink it every hour of the day and night and if I have it after 5pm, my bedtime is shot. I’ll just have to lay in the dark and scratch my bug bites for an hour or so.
Thursday: Woke up to the sound of the announcer who blares over the loudspeaker from the iglesia every morning around 6am if not earlier. I came out of my room to a flurry of activity around the house, Rosa, Pascual and the kids all hard at work: more chickens. So at 6:30 in the morning I was up to my elbows in feathers as I desplumar-ed (aka defeathered) one chicken after another. After breakfast, Neil and I headed up to the vegetable garden and spent the morning weeding. I enjoyed talking (yes, in English) with my new friend. He has a good bit of experience and insight into the town, having been here before, that he was really quite helpful as I brainstormed possibilities and approaches to project ideas for the next two years. It was a gorgeous day (oh aren’t they all..) we had flocks of parrots zipping across above us, chattering for all the world to hear. Bright green gems, they were. I heard a kiskadee and a Willow Flycatcher (always fun to recognize songs I haven’t heard in a long time) amongst the din of birds I’ve yet to learn and identify. We worked for three hours and the bugs weren’t bad at all and I’m convincing myself I’m getting use to them, whether I am or not..but over the past two nights I haven’t woken up once for scratching! My walk back to the house after we finished was through crowds of masked jóvenes dressed in red symbolizing religious figures. They danced on the basketball cancha surrounded by a crowd of onlookers, another Semana Santa tradition. A masked figure came up to me and began talking in broken English, asking how I liked the town and the festivities. Back at the house we ate, and I must say the chicken was quite good for all the work put into it (and I helped!). Later in the afternoon, we sat around after lunch talking with Rosa and Neil about the coffee production in the town (I learned that all along I’ve been drinking organic coffee straight from beautiful hills that surround us here in my new home!). For the afternoon Neil and I did a bit of exploring around the edges of town that I’d had yet to see. On my way to the albergue where he’s been staying, I was stopped by a lovely old woman who clasped my arm in greeting and asked if I’d eaten. Oh yes, lots of food. And pan? Yes, so much pan during this week of Semana Santa! Did I want some more? Wait here, let me get you some pan! She ran off into her house and was back moments later with three loaflets of pan. I told her about how I’d be here for two years and already was so enchanted by her lovely town. She was so wonderfully sweet, Matilda was her name. I gave Neil a loaf and we went walking. We went down to the river below the cancha and stopped to watch birds for a bit when a young man named Vitrilino came by and, seeing that we were enjoying nature, invited us up to a little overlook for what ended up being a gorgeous view of the thicket. We talked with him for a while and then continued on our way. I shared my binoculars with Neil for him to look at a beautiful glasswinged butterfly but he was so taken with the strength of my binox that he was blown away just looking at leaves! We walked on and found our way up to the cancha de futbol and while talking about our desire to play a boy came out of the woods kicking a soccer ball and, before we knew it, we found ourselves in a match, one goalie, one offense and one defense with Dani as the sun went down behind a shroud of pink clouds. Terrific.
Friday: Woke up today and saw the looong alfombra, the sawdust carpet that the children in the secondary school spent all night creating. They drew out designs and words, flowers and crosses with different colors of dyed asserin. It was quite impressive, all the work they put into it, and the thing covered the entire length of the calle. For the morning they had a religious procession where white robed youths led the community from the church to the school and back, stopping at various points to speak. A group carried a religious shrine adorned in flowers. Later I joined Pascual who led a group of muchachos on a recorrido, or tour, down to the river where we’d improved the trail and build up the pool below the waterfall. The group was in high spirits and down at the water they jumped right in and laughed under the beating cascade. I sat with Conrado, one of the members of the asociación and we talked about all kinds of things. He was bien paciente with my Spanish and we talked for almost an hour while the others played. They shared their gaseosas (sodas) with us and Pascual used his machete to cut up a melon he’d brought. It was beautiful out and the clouds made their way in for a matte afternoon. We climbed back up the tall ridge, serpentining higher and higher til we reached the road leading back to town. The men were really pleased with the tour and already were talking about coming back with friends. This is great because these are our “customers”, they loved our trail and had no objection to paying 15Q each for the experience. Yes, bring your friends, tell others, come back again!
6.4.10
The weekend went well, Saturday a good deal of the community went down to the river for an afternoon of fun. Rosa, Pascual, Josaline, Melbet, Wendy and I hiked down and straight off Wendy and I sloshed into the poza (pool) below the waterfall and stuck our heads under letting loose a few gurgling shrieks as the force of the water as well as the frigidness. I made some attempts at teaching her to swim but mostly she held herself up in the shallows and kicked, not wanting to submerge. My first failure as a Peace Corps volunteer and certainly not the last...but I won’t stop trying! We lunched on guisquil from Pascual’s terreno and what appeared as big juicy mushrooms but rather turned out to be chicken gizzards and the first bite tasted like the death I smelled the day of the killings and the second bite only vaguely hinted at the flavor you and I recognize and love. I decided that was enough. Luckily Melbet lives for any and all manner of carne so I passed it off to her.
Sunday I had the day to myself and did a bit of hiking down the beautiful ridge toward one of Pascual’s parcelas. The view is gorgeous to either side, lush mountain slopes with the volcanoes in the distance. Santiaguito, the active little loaf below the more dominating Santa Maria rumbled throughout the entire day. I saw all kinds of birds including a red-legged honeycreeper, black and white warbler, olive sided flycatcher, warbling vireo, boat billed flycatcher, summer tanager, rose breasted grosbeak, many black throated green warblers (singing still!), common tody flycatcher, black and white warbler, white winged tanager, slate throated redstart…a great morning to drink it all in at my own leisurely pace.
Monday, Neil and I went down and joined Pascual and his son Jonathan down on one of the parcels and we got busy chopping firewood with machetes. The blister popped and yes it still smarts but oh the satisfaction of hacking away with a machete…That afternoon we had the most lovely experience. Neil and I were looking to find Rosalia who was his host “mother” when he last visited. We didn’t find her but ended up chatting awhile with her neighbor Ruth. I love explaining to people that I’m going to be around for the next two years, yep, two whole years! Nope, I’m not leaving in between, two whole years. On our way down the dirt road, we stopped and got to talking with two cute lil’ ones sitting on the stoop of their house, Edmond and Jessica. Well, Rosalia appeared on the road and those two had a little reunion and she told us to come on over to Ismael’s house, next door. We walked in and the whole family was sitting about in the dirt yard and we sat down with Ismael and got to talking. Well I’m totally enamored with this guy, he knows a fantastic deal about the birdlife around the aldea and from his yard he was pointing out everything that flew by and teaching us the names in Spanish. He works for the Asociacion but has been kind of fading out of it due to his other work commitments. He works for Manos Campesinos which is an organic coffee supplier for which he has to travel to Escuintla (2hrs away?) fairly often. Additionally he cuts hair, there at his house (as he points to the ground to what’s left of the last client). So he’s not able to make all the ASODILL meetings and commitments and isn’t always available when they need a tour guide at the last minute. Well I’m hoping that our shared interest (we ended up talking for more than an hour on all things nature, then bleeding into Guatemalan politics..he’s fascinating and has a great deal of knowledge and is very in tuned with the need for nature conservation and awareness) perhaps I can re-initiate his interest and commitment. Before we left, he, Neil took out his camera wanting some goodbye pictures and we took all manner of pictures with different combinations of us and the family (I busted out my camera too). They were lovely people, showering us with pan dulce y café while we chatted. Ismael told me to drop in anytime I want. Oh this is totally what I daydreamed about, connecting with the community, having it become family. His wrinkled mother told me we all were going to cry when I leave, two years from now, and I already knew this to be true.

...and so it begins!

So our last week back in the comfort of familiarity was short and packed. Monday we didn’t get to the headquarters because of a bus strike happening in Guate, the city. This was great for us, San Antonio and Santa Caterina hung out for the day: we played bananagrams at Leo’s house, hit the internet café and hung in our central park, reading and catching up on journal entries. Tuesday was a bunch of wrap up in the office, last words, tips, safety advice, rules. I bought “Que Rico” which is the Peace Corps Guatemala Volunteer cook book. I can’t wait til I have my own kitchen and can cook all ‘dem recipes for myself. Wednesday we jumped around to our various towns to get a last look at everyone’s project. We had a nice little temblador, a bitty-earthquake, in the middle of the day that Fife’s family had been predicting for several days and he’d been warning us all morning there was an earthquake going to happen today and whaddyaknow, they were right! We were all mightily impressed. Then we move on to Thursday, which was the icing on the cake: Swearing In! Fourty-four Peace Corps Trainees camioneta-ed, tuk-tuked, microbused and drove with our familes to Hotel Antigua where we all sat on a gorgeous day, dressed up to the nines and were officially inducted into the glorious world of Peace Corps Volunteerdom! And we have diplomas to show for it! Mama Tina came with me and her daughter-in-law Elsa to see my graduation. Afterwards we took our families out for lunch at a pizza joint, Jordan, Chad, Kate and I and our family members. For the afternoon, we took last pictures around the fountain, all the women in their beautiful huipiles, and parted ways..Peace Corps volunteers, finally on our very own! From here on out we are no longer going to be babied, to have every hour of our day scheduled out for us, no more private P.C. microbuses ferrying us around, nope. We aren’t trainees anymore, they’ve open their cupped hands and are letting us jump off into oblivion, hoping they’ve taught us enough that these stubby lil' wings of ours will carry us aloft, on to our new lives.

Checkin' out the New Digs

22.3.10

Met my counterpart! Actually, I had two guests on counterpart day, not just Claudio but Rosa as well, the president of the sustainable development association that I will be working with. We had a day and a half of getting to know each other at the training center and on Tuesday the 16th we each headed off to our own future sites to spend a week introducing ourselves and getting to know our new community. It was a jam packed week, and then some. Rosa is my new host mother and I immediately grew to like her..she’s very friendly and has a fantastic sense of humor, is easy to talk to and helpful with my Spanish, not to mention wonderfully welcoming. Getting to know her and all her great qualities put me at ease, knowing I’ll be living with her for the first three months (Peace Corps requires we spend this introductory time with a family for safety and to better integrate into the community). We rode with Tara, another volunteer, whose counterpart had his own wheels and offered us a ride (score!). Tara will be living about an hour away from me which is fantastic, we can go to the market together and be a support system or even getaway for those times of need! Our travels took us south of the volcano range and westward. The landscape got more tropical and we stopped for mangoes and coconuts (had a truly juicy mango experience, fyi). We parted ways about an hour outside of our aldea where Rosa, Claudio and I hopped on to a camioneta for the last, breathtakingly beautiful stretch. The bus labored up the bouncy dirt roads, winding up and up through the lush foothills of the mountain range. Soon the edge of the road dropped off into oblivion and the facing ridges were covered in thick green vegetation. Flashes of color darted everywhere and I wanted to hang out the window with binox and bird book in hand but I think that might be seen as a little culturally unacceptable. We rounded a bend and, across a span of nothingness, another ridge drew sharply skyward and Rosa pointed out where I would be living for the next two years. It was dreamlike. I think my eyes must have been large as those mangos and I couldn’t wipe the inadvertent grin off my face. Gringas! Weird creatures, those. It was late afternoon and the bus crawled up the last bend onto the cobblestone stretch of my new home, the school on the low end and the church up at the top with houses lining either side. I got out and Pascual, smiling eyed and with a warm friendly grin, introduced himself as the husband of Rosa. They showed me my room, large and spacey with a window to outside (yaay!) and a huge comfy bed. Pascual and Rosa have three kids still in the house; the oldest is their only boy, Jonathan who is 15, Josaline is 11, and Marbet is 6. They have two girls in their 20s who live and go to school in Xela (the city of Quetzaltenango). The kids are shy and very polite and the parents are outgoing, love to talk, are very curious and thoughtful and intelligent, we immediately got on. Pascual is the director of the secondary school (Instituto Secondario) but also invests a lot of time and energy in the Asociation (looking for funding and training workshop opportunities, for example) and Rosa also runs a good sized store out of her home. They are very busy people, but so energetic and I feel lucky to be settling in with them. For the week, I was able to introduce myself to droves of people, starting with every grade in the primary school (what a way to begin!), and I met the main members of the Association. I also met with the representatives from every organization within the community (head of schools, members of the association, head of the coffee industry, organic and inorganic, the COCODE (basically a group of town representatives that are organized and able to petition to the government), and the auxiliary (church related). We talked about town priorities and needs. I got to sit in on a workshop led by an NGO community development group that has assisted the community greatly in their efforts to start up an ecotourism sector. This is a great organization that has done a great deal but that runs off of very little money and has lots of other towns they’re assisting so they were glad to see that I was coming in and I was glad to learn that I’d have their contact and support. I got to know the town, saw the coffee factory (harvest just ended for the year), their lombricompost (worm compost) production, weeded in the beginnings of a trial community vegetable garden (completely organic!), and saw the new guest quarters-a small 3 room lodge for visiting tourists that volunteer for the association, helping in the coffee, garden, or trails. This lodge is brand new and still needs a bit of work, along with the volunteer and ecotourism program in general. These people are so passionate, though, ready to make it really roll. They’re so excited to have me here to help in their mission and they are all just so friendly and welcoming. I got a huge tour of some of their trails with their 3 tour guides, Eduardo, Claudio and Keller. We birded for a whole half day (starting at 5am) and saw all KINDS of birds(!!!) They have great potential in the aviturismo department, but the guides have a lot to learn yet. They do know a lot of the common birds, even by ear, but many of their names are local names, and in Spanish. A serious birder coming here would be disappointed if they expected to know every last little bird they saw. I’m definitely excited to work on improving our bird tour option, any excuse to get back into those woods and learn the birds with a bunch of gung-ho Guatemaltecos! We saw some cool birds, too..squirrel cuckoo (I was psyched, I love these long tailed characters), several kinds of strikingly colored jays, tanagers, emerald toucanet (!),a hook billed kite, lots of migrant warblers still here before they head back north in the spring, and we heard quetzals!! This is fantastic, Resplendent Quetzals are very true to their name, absolutely magnificent birds and a huge attraction for birders..so basically gold to us. What we need to do is find out how we can guarantee a sighting, find the specific trees they feed upon and determine their daily and seasonal habits. Gold. This is what we need, to get tourists in to the town, bringing in money because there is NOT much work for citizens of this community and they really have to struggle to make ends meet. The land they produce off of is pretty measly, very steep and not easy to work and, as the town grows, there is less available to support all of the people. But they have a rich bounty which is the hugely diverse forest beyond the coffee; they own 35 hectares of natural bosques further up the mountain. The community is slowly coming to understand that that is their goldmine. They don’t have to use up their resources; they can share them with the public! We just need to tell the world, get them to come, have them fall in love, tell others, come back, and bring friends! So here we are now. This, ladies and gentlemen, is where my true journey and challenge begins.

Here is my new host family, and yes, they are as sweet as they look.

Headed to Quetzaltenango-Where there be Quetzals!

This will be my new home, where I will be settling in to a brand new life, a whole new adventure. All I really know about it, though, is the name! And that it’s located in the department of Quetzaltenango which literally translates to “there are quetzals here” in Guatemalese. We went to the Peace Corps office in Santa Lucia on Site Assignment Day, March 12th 2010. David, our program technical trainer drove excruciatingly slowly along the curvy highway, and we yelled at him in excited frustration to hurry the heck up! This was our lives and we were about to find out where they were going to lead! They blindfolded us and we stood in front of a map of Guatemala, outlined in the grass with sticks, leaves and twigs. In the grass were masking tape X’s Flavio, the man who made the decisions, led us each to one of the points and we stood, blind, listening to the rustling of whoever was close by. We were handed a folder and knew that on the front of it was written the name of the town that right that moment was eagerly awaiting their perky new volunteer. I clutched mine like my life depended on it. We reached out and could feel other hands feeling around and were told to take off our blindfolds. Looking down at the folder, I saw “Stacey Hollis, Quetzaltenango”. On the map I was the person standing furthest to the west and nearby I saw Tara and Amber. We all laughed and ripped into our information packets, flurrying through the overload of information, deciphering the Spanish into some idea of what we were about to dive in to. So here it is. This is an Aldea, which I loved the sound of..it means a small community, 1,200 habitantes strong. Next I saw the climate: “calido lluvioso” rainy, con temperaturas entre 23-26 degrees Celcius”.. umm had to look that one up (73-78 in Fahrenheit). Okay, warmer and rainy is actually good, that means tropical..well when I read on and saw it mentioning “abundante vegetacion tropical” I felt a rush of excitement!! The altitude was 1250m which translates to about 4000ft, and I’m basically on the slope that leads off the volcano chain toward the Pacific Ocean. My town is small, “hay 5 tiendas pequenas, un hospedaje o albergue (small visitor’s lodge), y la iglesia catolica”. So there’s not much to it! Definitely a soccer field and basketball court, though. This will be a good icebreaker, and “sin duda”, is recommended as a great way to introduce yourself into the community..hop on in to those pickup games!
So now the nitty gritty good stuff: When Flavio set me on my spot on the map, he said, “you are the first volunteer to be sent here”, my mind raced and I grinned and squirmed under my blindfold..I felt proud that they believed in me to kick start a whole new place, all on my own. They decided that little Stacey Hollis would be the first to place the mark of Peace Corps on this little aldea in the southwestern foothills of Guatemala. What I leave will be a manifestation of my own ambition, my own initiative. I will come in and be the first Gringa to spend two years lending my hands to that which the community desires and I won’t have a volunteer to give me their take on the town, no structure to follow, no (darn!) house to inherit. I am thrilled!
Next: The town has a reserve comunitaria de bosque nuboso…yipppeeee!! I got me a cloud forest!! And oh man, I was jumping when I read on “35 hectares (86 acres), senderismo y el aviturismo (!!!) con la presencia de mas de 180 especies de aves” including a strong presence of “el ave nacional, El Quetzal”!!! Flavio got me a bird site! Woohoo!! It said “existen abundantes quetzals (which totally means good quality healthy forest to support this bird that relies on mature aguatillo trees), aves, mamiferos silvestres como pizotes, andasolos, micoleon, tigrillos (little lions and tigers?!)”. And furthermore, “cercano a la comunidad puede apreciarse el Volcan Santiaguito (activo) y el Volcan Santa Maria..I got volcanoes! That really did make me happy because I get a lot of pleasure out of looking at my three volcanoes here in San Antonio and the occasional rumble and blast of silt and ash is exciting. Steph, one of the masters students who is here to study volcanology totally told me she knew where I was going and that supposedly there’s some big valley that’ll protect me if it ever does give a really good blow. Hey, sounds good to me.
So my town already has a Sustainable Development Association that they started in 2008 and they have been working on the development of interpretive trails in the Reserva Forestal Comunitaria and “ruta a Catarata El Chilamate” (a waterfall trail!). They have been actively inviting in international volunteers to live with host families and work on local coffee and flower farms as well as to help with the trail work. So it sounds like there is something established, but it’s new and they want training for the hosts families and guides. Also there’s talk about training teachers in environmental education and involving the school kids in environmental projects in the reserve, oh it all sounds good to me. It’s nice that there is something set up already that I have at least some structure to work off of!
So yea, this girl isdefinitely not complaining! I am ecstatic. Course I have yet to see the place en vida real. But sheesh, it sure sounds good! So now I have the weekend to scour the internet about my soon-to-be-home and get ready to meet my counterpart, my partner in crime for the next two years. His name is Claudio and he’s the secretary of the association. We will spend Monday getting to know each other at the training center and then together will travel to the aldea on Tuesday where I will spend the next 5 days getting to know my new community. We come back for 3 days of paperwork in Santa Lucia, swearing in (graduation!) is on the 25th and that weekend I will set off, my bags all packed, for a lone ride on the camioneta to my new home. Warp speed, I’m telling you.



My pictures include a group shot of the women artesans that my group worked with, here they're holding their diplomas that we awarded them for successfully attending our charlas on hosting tourists in their homes. The kittyshot is Pancho "Panchito" Lopez, sitting next to the wood stove. This is why his lil' whiskers are singed.

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.

Field Based Training

22.2.10

We are just flying through February, aren't we? So this past week my training group and I spent a fun-filled week in “Field Based Training” where we get to get our hands dirty and see some new sights. We started out by visiting a volunteer in Chilasco, a small aldea where they grow lots and lots of broccoli and he's working with the tourism office (more aptly classified as “tourism hut”) to develop the business aspects of their tourism industry. The town butts up to the Sierra de las Minas Biosphere Reserve so they have cloud forest hikes and a great waterfall nearby called Salto de Chilasco which we got to hike to. It was gorgeous and the cloud forest was dripping lush.


The majority of the week we spent in Alta Vera Paz in a small aldea called Samac. A volunteer is finishing up his 2 years and so one of us will be replacing him. He's working on developing a cultural tour of some ruins of a German-run coffee farm. The town is Quiche Maya and we really got to know much of the community as we did a lot of activities with both the men and the women. The entire aldea is quite small and so we were the main attraction all week. When we moved into their newly constructed cabins complete with bunkbeds, composting toilets and computers, there was a crowd of men, women and children huddled at the entrance of both cabins watching our every move. They were very proud for this was the first time they ever had accommodated so many visitors, so it was a big deal indeed. The townspeople were all incredibly welcoming and kind and their community already thinks the world of Peace Corps and our Associated P.C. Director Flavio who accompanied us for a few days. He's the one who visits the sites and determines what sites need volunteers and which volunteer should be placed there. Basically all of Guatemala think him a god of sorts, or so we've noticed, since he doles out free help (us). He's got our lives in the palm of his hand so to us, so we're definitely de acuerdo with the Guatemalans. He's way pilas (a go-getter, achiever).


So some of the stuff we did throughout the week included hearing lots of charlas on things like environmental interpretation, how important it is to work with other town and form tourism alliances rather than compete, we did a day of trailwork/maintenance taught by two current volunteers, had a session on making signs using routers, made some action plans addressing various issues around the community that we split up and investigated (my “team” and I made an action plan on how the toilets need seats and instructions on how to use the composters)...all of these things we did with the community so I had lots of chances to really get to talking with them. After every interaction, I'd walk off grinning like a fool..these people are so pure and just living their lives. The town is small, doesn't have much money, there's only a tiny little store, they grow coffee and sugar cane, have probably 10 tourists pass through a year, it's clean though, and they all speak Quiche as their first language, they love their current volunteer and are so looking forward to their next one (I was constantly responding to their queries of how much I liked it here and if I'd want to stay), the women make their unique white cotton weaving called Pik'bil and they are coming up with new ways to contribute to the family income, through making jewelry with seeds and growing rabbits for food. The men aren't afraid to tell us how proud they are that their women are strong and independent. Yes, I was completely charmed by this place, these people. How could you not be when you walk by a dusty yard and six children come running out yelling “Estacey!”.


Riding in the back of a pickup truck on our way to the cloud forest.

Bienvenidos a Febrero, el mez mas loco que todos!

I'm sitting in my room listening to the rain pattering away at the zinc roofing above my head and hearing my host mom's words in my mind: February, the craziest month of them all. You never know what you'll get, freezing cold, boiling hot, rain..each day is a surprise. The rain is actually very unusual for this time of year, as we are just entering into the warm, dry months of summer. What's to blame is climate change, por supuesto. Nonetheless, I had a very pleasant walk in the chipi chipi (steady sprinkles that are famous throughout the rainy season. Today it was really a drizzle but chipi chipi is more than amusing enough to bend the rules a bit.) with my good friend and groupmate Hilary. We strolled around the aldea of San Andres, which is a tiny sub-pueblo off from San Antonio. The clouds hanging low and the hazy silouettes of the trees along the ridges above us made for a very tropical late afternoon.

Last week was packed full with work as my group and I prepared our charlas, a formal class or presentation that is basically the bread and butter of Peace Corps. Simple, straight to the point presentations that we will be doing many of in the next two years. We presented to several councelors from the municipalities of San Antonio and our neighboring pueblo, Santa Caterina. Also attending were a handful of women from our group of artisans here in S.A. with whom we are hoping to develop a cultural fair as well as the trainee group from Santa Caterina. Additionally our technical trainer David and our program manager Flavio (who is in charge of what site we'll be placed in based on our experience and our performance..gulp) were there to evaluate us. So you could say I was a bit nervous. Our charlas were, together, how to create and conduct a charla. Charlas on charla-ing. Like, how to assess your audience, the importance of experiential learning, how to break the ice with your students, planning and preparing your charla and, finally, the importance of reviewing and processing what you've taught your students. The last one was mine. I talked loud, got people laughing with my ice breaker (if they answered my questions reviewing the charlas right, they got a prize!) and I really felt I got the message across with repetition, a short rollplay where I did a review with my “students” to be sure they got the message of throwing their trash in the basurero instead of the river or streets (Acto 1: I, as the teacher, forgot to review and they all ran off throwing trash all over the place). My groupmates and I were very pleased at how it seemed our audience really picked up a lot from each charla as they told me what they learned from each one in my review. So, despite my nervousness, I got some good laughs, got the point across, stumbled a few times with my spanish, had my notes to keep me rolling, and managed to come out on the other side not too worse for wear!




In other news, I had the experience of watching a Mayan ceremony as it was conducted for us on Saturday (which is the Mayan new year) by a spiritual guide in Iximche. This was a really beautiful place, up in the rolling hills with towering pines, cypress and oaks. The Kaqchiquel (one of 21 different Mayan tribes in Guatemala) had a town here with temples and ball courts, the remains of which still stand. In 1524, the Spanish conquistadors overtook the town but they didn't remain long for the townspeople, hiding in the hills above, continuously attacked during the nights until finally the Spanish relented and left to find another place to name “capital” of this new land they now called their own. The ceremony was about an hour and a half and our conductor had us toss a handful of different colored candles into a growing fire. He invoked a variety of different gods to protect us and our friends and families, bring good and release us from our sins (bear with me, this was all in spanish/kaqchiquel, so I might be a bit off about some of it) and while speaking, he tossed various things in as well-rosemary, dulces, sugar, aguardiente (liquor) and some little brown lumps. We were made to face in each sacred direction as he prayed in the indigenous language and he had us shut our eyes and flicked aguardiente into our faces. All the while, other people were in front of their own fires and various flower strewn alters lighting candles and a small group of men played the marimba and a cello. I felt very much the tourist but not quite as bad as the ones that just would walk up to the bowed worshipper and snap away with their cameras. Afterwards we ate a meal of comida tipica that was muy rica. It was a beautiful day and I even saw a few birds-stellars jay and an eastern bluebird: one bird you see commonly in the Western United States and the other in the east, but here, the two worlds come together as one, in an entirely different world. And these aren't migrants, either, they're residents living in a habitat befitting their needs. Can't blame them for choosing Guatemala! Ahh and there's still so much yet to be seen and that I have to learn in this gran bellesa pais.

San Lorenzo El Tejar and Mother Organico

30.1.10

Today we had the pleasure of visiting San Lorenzo El Tejar where a group from the Peace Corps Healthy Schools program is spending their training period. It was our “Community Exchange” where we get to see where another group lives. Their town is vastly different from ours..it’s much smaller (I learned that San Antonio is 10,500 people strong) and it is actually an aldea (which is the next step down in size from pueblo). The girls there showed us around, we saw the church and central square. They don’t have many tiendas (maybe three, while we have dozens) and the community is mostly made up of Ladinos, rather than the indigenous Mayan community that is brightly announced in the colorful clothing worn by the women in our pueblo. Nonetheless, I was smitten with the place, it’s very hilly and the houses are more spread out which leaves room for a plethora of lush green growth. I wanted to stay the afternoon and just plop down somewhere with my binoculars. They took us up to a hill that overlooked the aldea and across to the hillside fincas growing a variety of crops. Their river was a sore spot, though. Before it even came in to view, the smell was highly evident. The whole town uses it as their trash can and there is literally a section where everyone dumps their waste. Mortifying? Absolutely. Their water supply is a spring borne close to the overlook and the whole aldea only has about an hour of water a day with which they fill every vessel they have in addition to their pila basins to last until the next time the water flows (which is never truly guaranteed). The community pila has a constant supply of water from the river, which then is directed right back with all the soil and soap of the daily laundry. It seemed to us that this town seriously needed some environmental education volunteers. We were driven back to San Antonio with the San Lorenzo clan in tow so that we could give them a taste of our pueblo. We brought them first to the mirador at the entrance to the city. This looks out across the basin where our town and that of Santa Caterina lay nestled. It's a rather pretty vista with the volcanoes in the background (but it's been fairly cloudy the past three days so we couldn't give them the truly grand view). We also walked with them through the Mercado de Artesania which was fun because they don't have the traditional clothing draped all across their community the way we do. I presented our basurera, the trash processing plant. We are unique to be one of the few in Guatemala that actively employ the process of Lombricompost..or that of using lombrises, a.k.a. worms, in the composting process. For everyone's information, the worms do not get paid. But hey, it must be a good life, being tossed into a huge pila full of rotting organic waste (for a worm, anyway). All the trash of San Antonio is picked up in trucks that circulate around the city and, for 2Q a bag, they haul it up to the dump. In their homes, the locals are supposedly separating the organic and inorganic waste into different bags, but looking into the pila where they dump the organico, it's pretty evident that not everyone got the notice. Nonetheless, 80% of all the town's trash is organic, the rest is inorganic and separated out into 15% recyclable material (scrap metal, cardboard, plastic, which several companies pay to pick up) and the remaining 5% left is burned. But see, the stuff that's burned is what the environmental councelor Sergio, from the Municipality, wants to find a solution for. Basically the dozens of employees working there every day are breathing in toxic chemicals from the burning waste, not to mention the toll it takes on Mudder Earf. The Lombricompost, which goes through several stages of decomposition over the course of 6-8 months, becomes beautiful rich abono, or fertilizante natural. It is hefted into 100lb bags and sold for 40Q. These bags of organico, rich in all the nutrients that remain steady throughout the process of being picked from a tree, eaten to the quick, thrown out, and trucked up to the basurera, are returned back to the earth to lend a rich hand to the next growth of crops. Sustainability at it's finest...and the world keeps spinning round.

A Gift

27.1.10

Smiling little Stephanie was laying on her petate, a woven grass mat, as she worked on her homework. The grasses, which are used to make the mats, are themselves known as Petate. They grow tall in the lagoon beyond the far end of the city. The mats are often used to sit upon when the mujeres are weaving their ropa tradicional because the weaving loom is attached at eye level or higher and the mujer sits upon her petate on the ground, holding the base of the loom where she works her magic. But, back to Stephanie with her shining eyes..this is the host sister of Hilary, one of my group members. I stopped by their house before we headed up to the cancha de basketball and was talking to the girl about school and the cartoon character on her notebook while Hilary got ready to go. Well, before I knew it, the little 6 year old was tying a beautiful woven bracelet around my wrist, telling me she wanted me to keep it and nodding with determination when I asked if she was sure. Well sheesh! As we walked along the street, I decided I'd paint her a watercolor in thanks for the sweet gift. “Muchas Gracias Stephanie, para la pulsera tan bonita! Que amable! Tu nueva amiga, Stacey”.

Green Little Sprouts

25.1.10

Buenas!

So time is already flying as we newbies, rookies, green little sprouts make our way through the winding training road that prepares us to become legit: true “Peace Corps Volunteers”. In the past week, we've seen so much more of the country that we will be calling home and I can honestly say, this place is worlds away from the one I left twenty days ago. As I was riding the camioneta (bus) back into the valley that is my home for these eleven weeks, grinding shoulder to shoulder with a small woman on my right and my head bouncing against the stomach of the young man standing in the crowded aisle to my right, I peered through the mass of bodies to see out the window where Guatemala was whizzing by, trees with epiphytes, tin-roofed shacks, rotulas (signs) proclaiming their “fe in dios”, women walking with baskets filled with corn atop their heads..Sheesh! A mere twenty days and I'm already enormously attached to this place, these people, this world. But, despite all I've seen, I really don't even know a fraction of it yet. Only this weekend did I get my first taste of a feria, one of the many annual fairs. I think that every day of the year, in one city or another in this great country a fair is happening, I have no doubt. I stood among the crowd and watched the parade of huge decorated floats bearing beautiful winged child-angels, a jesus standing atop a globe (which, if it weren't for the men walking below him, lifting the telephone wires with ultra long sticks, he'd surely have been electrocuted..); children dressed as farmers, huipile-wearing mayan women, businessmen, even a drunk; young people danced in the streets masked as old men and ladies and random cartoon characters, music blasted from a truck out of the huge speakers that produced such a din my pants vibrated, fireworks in constant procession, day and night; men rode atop horses with capes flashing as they galloped up and down the cobblestone streets narrowly avoiding the crowds three persons deep on either side; the dancing lasted late into the night, cartoon characters and, amusingly enough, men unabashedly dressed in wigs and scantily clad women's clothing. Food vendors displayed their fried goods and hunks of hanging, chewed-up looking meat that was sawed off into writhing piles (that we saw still hanging the next day, wrapped in a woven cloth, awaiting a second..third..? night of vending..). Street food is a swear word in the ears of our lovely PC health officers. It was an experience indeed.

In other news, I've been fortunate enough to be in a group of PC trainees that love sports as much as I do. We have a great cancha (field) up the hill that we've played many a basketball game with any of the local kids willing to join us. We played once a game of soccer with some kids half our age and saw just how bad we non-futbol playing gringos really were. I didn't care, I love the running and the challenge of attempting to even get close to tease the ball away from those quick-flying feet that move with deft skill. Perhaps by the end of my time here I'll have learned a thing or two in the world of futbol.

Today we had a tour of Guate (which is how they call Guatemala City) and got to experience calling and taking taxi cabs within the city since PC forbids us to take inter-city buses because basically, as a gringo, you're just begging to be robbed if you do. We saw the American Embassy and the hospital and spent way too much time in the two malls which are about a stone's toss away from each other. That's two malls too many for me. I've been dying to get back into the forest which I got a small taste of, what a week ago? We hiked up into the hills the other weekend with Eduardo (our maestro) and Abner (my co-trainee's host brother)..the forests here aren't quite rainforests and I don't remember the classification (sub-tropical? It's definitely not wet enough here during the dry season to support a true rainforest) but I didn't care..I was finally under some trees again! I had my binox and bird book but didn't get much real birding in since the hike mission was to reach an overlook out across the valley and it was midday when the birds aren't wildly active. I was overjoyed nonetheless with what I did have a chance to drink in, two wintering warblers: a black throated green and wilson's warbler (both of which I saw this past summer on their breeding grounds back up in the states!); also saw a blue-headed vireo and some Guate hummers (“picaflores”)-Rufous and Lucifer. Now if only I could go back up there, it's really not far, and spend a whole morning with book and binox. I need to find a companion! Being small, female and gringa, I'm sticking to not wandering off alone the way I might back in more familiar territory. Plus the dogs up in the higher farmlands are pretty protective in a kind of scary way. My hope, of all hopes is that I'm placed in a sight where I have a forest reserve at my fingertips. They're teasing us with signs in the training center claiming that we could replace end-of-service volunteers that are leaving various national parks that I'm literally drooling over. Patience, girl. Seriously, though, I'm living in the now, sucking it all in, trying to step back at least once every day to appreciate that I'm here right now. Wherever you are, there you are and here I am. I have a post-it note on my desktop that says this “Love where you are. keep your eyes wide and your mind open. you've got everyone rooting for you. Love, you.” Cheesy, I know. But it's sweet to see on the rare day I turn this bugger on to write a thing or two. So yes. My eyes are wide, taking it all in, so thankful that I'm on this adventure, growing every day. My mind is expanding by the hour. This feels right, being here. Yes, yes, still the honeymoon period, still loving every second and having trouble imagining that the statistical highs really are followed by statistical lows. Blogs to come, I know, but for now I'm reveling in it. Better while I can, right? And when those lows come along, I'll have my friends and family rooting for me from afar and I have myself to rely upon. Sink or swim. I'm going to do my best to keep this nose of mine above water.

Hasta luego, mis amigos.

Guatemala Beginnings

Hola Todos! 20.1.10

Here goes for report numero uno from the belleza paiz de Guatemala! From the very beginning I had the tips of my fingers hanging dead tight..and luckily enough, because no one told how tight I would need to hold on for the ride that would begin the moment I set foot on that plane! It's been a whirlwind and time both flies and sparkles in front of my wide open eyes. There's so much to take in and I'm doing my very best. I can proudly say that so far I have (as is my custom) written down just about every experience that I have undergone since my parents and brother let go from those lingering embraces that now seem a lifetime away. From the window of the plane as we descended toward the land of Guate, I watched the conical tips of a line of volcanos press out of the thick grayness that blanketed the country. We dropped beneath and revealed was a lush landscape dotted with pueblos and cities filling the valleys. Deep scars opened sections of earth in the form of gorges and even along their steep walls houses or shacks rather, held on with nothing other than a prayer. From there the sweeping began. First we were swept to the training center, looking out the windows of the bus we drank sweet frescas and bleary eyes attempted to focus on the scene as it flew past. Guate City is just as you've always heard, the charm of it may or may not be revealed through much time spent searching. Cars and motorcycles and buses zoomed by and every curve was taken with abandon. Shops, people and trash lined the busy streets. We focused in on the Burger King with armed guards in the parkinglots and more Chuckie Cheeses than you care to keep track of. We got out of the city and passed through smaller towns and a valley or two, cooing over the sight of the volcanos. The training center was another world, far removed from the dingy city. We pulled in to a lush, beautifully landscaped eden that looked out toward Volcan de Agua, one of the more breathtaking volcanoes, right out of a child's imagination. A perfect cone. Nevermind the cell phone towers and whatnot on the top, to set eyes upon this landform invokes unabashed amazement and awe. Only minutes later do you look a little westward to the two, Fuego and Atetenango (I may be way off on that name). Fuego is the one you want to definitely take note of..this is the active one, puffing mushrooms of humo when it so chooses..somehow these three always seem to be in view no matter where I've been yet and Fuego has become my friend, endlessly entertaining and a rollercoaster of emotion. You only have to look west to know how Fuego is feeling any time of the day. So our first three days of training were basically an introduction to Peace Corps: welcome, we want you to truly evaluate throughout the next three months whether this is truly how you want to spend the next two years of your life, we're going to give you more vaccinations than you ever though possible and try to scare you about every last living thing that will surely infest you through oral fecal contamination many times over throughout your stay, spanish level assesment, separation into groups of 5 based on your level and whether you're lucky enough to be in Sustainable Community Tourism (the admitted, best by far, program to be in in PC Guate) or Healthy Schools. There seriously were two poster boards, one for each program and Tourism was all “You could be lucky enough to be in THIS park helping a whitewater rafting company or a zip line adventure tourism setup or a forest with the best birdwatching ever...!!” and Escuelas Saludables: “You're gonna be in a classroom teaching kids to wash their hands, not eat dirt, wash their hands, wash their hands, and wash their hands”). After 3 days of that and living with nearby host families in the town of Santa Lucia Milpas Altas (I was placed with my friend Hilary who ended up being in my Training Group as well) we were all shipped off to our various pueblos where we'd be spending the next 11 weeks in training, each in our own host family home. I was placed with Christina Giron in the pueblo of San Antonio, Aguas Callientes. The moment I walked in she welcomed me warmly and I knew right away we'd easily become close friends. She immediately told me that everyone called her Mama Tina and that I should as well. She is a beautiful, round faced, 60 year old abuela with high cheek bones and wavy dark hair. She wears the traditional huipile, a brightly colored, richly designed shirt that was weaved in the traditional way especially unique to San Antonio: “de dos lados” they call it, of both sides. It means that even when you turn it over to the opposide side, you'll find that both carry the intricate designs and there's not a stitch to be seen. It can take months to complete, and that is only if you spend all your days doing nothing other than weaving. So realistically, a single huipile may take up to a year to finish. And my Mama Tina makes all the huipiles and traditional belts and skirts that she wears. They are phenomenal, just breathtaking. There is no question, in looking at one, how much effort is put into such a masterpiece. And the women who weave in San Antonio are also known for dying their own thread, using rich colors that don't fade over the years. I'm sure every town has it's own unique wonders but, well, the bee's knees is what comes to mind. So my home is up a small hill on one of the many winding, enclosed, busy streets of San Antonio. The pueblo is larger than I anticipated as you can see from the mirador when you come to the city entrance at the peak before the valley. There is another city that ours melds into, Santa Catarina, where another tourism group is based and the two fill the valley and seep up into the foothills where a patchwork of various crops reach upward not completely overtaking the forests that cover the ridges that span out, emcompassing both towns in a wide embrace. Ever towards the west are our three faithful senturies, Agua, Fuego and Atetenango. The streets of the pueblo are dirt and cobblestone. Motorcycles, pickup trucks, camionetas (refurbished school buses from the U.S.) and tuktuks (little three-wheeled enclosed taxis) race entirely too quickly up and down the streets that are always alive with townspeople, selling tortillas, hanging out doors and windows, washing laundry at the public pilas, playing futbol, chatting, fixing their homes, pushing carts, leading a horse or a donkey, carrying firewood, walking with huge baskets upon their heads, there's no end to the activity! Every walk down the street as I make my way to clase de espanol is a new sight, a different face, another “buenas dias” with a wide smile. Some of the different things I've come across as I toddle along include a stray colt trotting along the cobblestone, neighing for it's mother; a drunk man out cold, laying on a stoop; a woman that strolls along every morning at 6:30 yelling at the top of her lungs “leche!”, the multitudes of stray dogs who hardly give you a second glance, the many street vendors that manifest out of nowhere at different times of the day selling food that we've been strictly told by our nurses NOT to even think about eating...Now we'll move from the streets back to my home, where I live with Mama Tina. It's not a huge place, two bedrooms, a small kitchen, a small, attached tienda where she sells a handfull of goods (toilet paper, matches, flavored icies, aciete de maiz, random things and people ring a bell at the door there that has bars they pass the goods and quetzales across), all of these lead to a wider open room between it all where there's a wood stove that she uses for cooking (to supplement her own small oven/stove in the kitchen) and the pila. The pila is a cement 3-basin set up where the middle, deepest one, has a tap and we are lucky enough to be in a town where water is available at all hours of the day. A small bowl is left floating in the water basin and you use it to scoop the water to the left basin where there's a drain and you pour the cold water over your hands or splash it on your face or wash the dishes that, dirty, are left in the shallow right basin with the soap and the scrubbie blue plastic tangle. There's also a bathroom with a shower that you reach from this room on the opposite side from my door. There is a light shower curtain for a door that dances in the breeze a toilet that luckily flushes on it's own (without chucking in a gallon of water) and a shower that runs only cold and therefore is my bucket bath haven. Oh and Mama Tina takes such care of me, sure she's paid a hefty stipend, but she seems to take great pleasure out of my 3000 “muchas gracias”es a day for all that she does for me: cooking all my meals, handwashing my clothing, boiling hot water and then adding enough cold so as to not scald myself during my bucket baths, bringing steaming cafe con leche in to my room for me as I get ready for the especially early days of training...and I'm really under the assumption that she likes me! I absolutely adore her, she's just too cute and very light hearted, laughs easily, and listens to me with great interest as I excitedly tell her about my day, babbling along with my mediocre spanish. We do talk for great lengths of time, she's lately really been opening up to me about her family and the amazing, eventful, sometimes tragic, life she has led. We've shared pictures of our families and she always sits with me as I eat, even when she's not (Peace Corps eating schedule and that of the Guatemaltecos are about an hour or more different). She's taught me “a tortear” (how to form tortillas by hand) and helps me with my spanish, speaking slower with me than she does with her family and correcting my grammar or describing words I don't understand. We have a very warm, friendly relationship..there have been times when I've resisted reaching out to hug her but I have a feeling it would be a welcomed gesture. She lives alone but her house opens and connects to a second section with all it's own amenities where her grown daughter Evelia and 15 year old son Hemery live. She also has 2 other sons with families, Walter lives next door with his wife Elsa and 4 children and Alex lives in the next pueblo over with his wife Cheny and 9 year old Steven and 9 month old Moices. Steven is around a lot, the first few days he spent here during his “summer vacation” to see the gringa. He's a little goofball spitfire who likes to tell me every word of every movie he's seen (“y dispues...y dispues..and then..and then..!”). Tina is the only one who really talks with me, I've only had small talk with the rest. They all don't tend to speak slowly and I'm just not at the level to understand when they're speaking so fast and so softly. It's a little bit tough, because I'd like to become closer with them, especially Evelia but they have their lives and aren't responsible for my spanish lessons. I hang with them occasionally and try to keep up and they are nice, just not as welcoming. I'm taking it in stride and am thankful to have the majority of my time around the house alone with Tina. The others are around after dark and I have had more homework than you might want to shake a stick at and so that causes the need to retreat to my lovely cave of a room. Ah my room, I sit here now and hear the dogs barking, the occasional rooster, kids laughing, church music, adults chatting, bombas exploding (Guatemala really translates to We Love Fireworks, all the time, any time, the louder the better). Back to my room: .only one fuzzy plastic window faces out to the pila room but it's very spacy, my bed is quite comfortable (no unidentified lumps), a great big dresser with doors, a mirror and shelves to put my clothes, books, toiletries and such. There's a long table I have my little suitcase on and put my “school work”, there's a tall, wooden, for lack of a better term, “hanging unit” that leans against the corner where I drape my towel, and shower stuff, a dirty laundry bag and drying clothes. All in all it's quite a nice set up and I've got everything organized and so happy. The only time I don't so much like it is when she's making tortillas and the woodstove smoke drifts into my room. One definite difficulty with Guatemala, I've found, is all the thick air you tend to have no choice but to inhale: woodsmoke, car fumes, volcano ash..if you were a smoker, you'd probably kick it in a month. But all in all, I'm quite happy here in the little town of San Antonio. It's a clean town with a pretty central park and is about 45 minutes outside of Antigua which is the touristy hip town that we've been to a handful of times. There you can find lots and lots of gringos, wireless internet (if you're brave enough to tote your laptop on the camionets and through the busy mercados), and coffee that isn't instant (all the good stuff that comes out of Guate tierra is exported, so the locals are left with the fake crap). While the mercado is demasiado interasante with more fruits than you ever thought existed, and all the blazing colors of the woven wonders sold by the Guate mujeres that just about literally blow your mind, and the true coffee that really is to die for, I can't say I'm much of a fan of Antigua. I watched a beautiful, old woman sitting on the sidewalk with her wares for sale set about her knees looking uncomfortably away as a fat man leaned over her holding a big camera, shoving it mercilessly into her face and clicking away, stopping to look at what he'd taken, and clicking some more before completely turning around and walking away. Not a word, not a cent, just some good ol' American ignorance. My blood curdled a bit as I watched her gaze at his receding hind end. But, that's what I'm here for, to turn tourism into something that I feel good about: something that benefits not the richest high-ups on the Guatemalan ladder that is overbearingly bottom-heavy, but rather all those who are putting all their straining efforts just to hang on to that crowded lowest rung. And, while I don't know just how I'm going to do it, the Peace Corps is fully (more than I could ever, ever have imagined) invested in making sure that I am prepared in every way possible and provided all the knowledge, information, resources, training and confidence that I can ingest in these preceding weeks. Like I said, just hanging on for this wild ride, and, to be sure, it already has completely become “The Ride of My Life”. Much love y buenas noches.

The Most Amazing Feeling

The dwindling days have been crawling by, is that possible? A whirlwind is about to begin, I'm about to jump on to a fast-moving train. I'm so glad that these last days have been laden with family and friends, the holidays have made it even more possible to leave for Guatemala with warm, perfect memories. On a S.I.N. (Sisters In Nature) trip, my mother and her two sisters Anne and Dot, my little cousin Chloe and I, drove to the Eastern Shore of Virginia National Wildlife Refuge. This is where I spent working as a biological technician for the better part of 2008. It was toward the end of that year that I began my application to become a Peace Corps Volunteer. I remember sitting in the refuge office, filling out the applicant questionnaire and wondering if this was really meant to be. Two years of my life handed to the winds. 2009 trodded past as I continued to put my efforts toward the vague, distant idea of becoming a Peace Corps volunteer. They ask for so much and as you continue to provide and wait and wonder and hope, your commitment builds and your determination strengthens. In the end, when you find out where they want to send you, what they want you to do, the feeling is like a burst of light: wild relief, pride, excitement, anticipation..

The countdown to staging begins and it's all you can do to distract yourself to make the time pass more quickly.

Anyways, at the Refuge, we walked all about and the snow geese are here en masse, on their wintering grounds. It was so wonderful to see my boss, the refuge biologist Pam. She wrote one of my recommendation letters toward becoming a PCV, and in addition to being my boss, she is a great friend.

The holidays were family filled, perfect for getting to see everyone in one place before I go. We had a goodbye potluck at Dot's with family and a handful of friends and I was able to spend a great last night with my brother here in the city. I'm going to miss that boy so much.

So now. This is my last full day before I have to meet at the hotel for staging tomorrow. We congregate at 12:30 for a day of orientation. The following morning, Wednesday, January 6th, we take flight, head south for Guatemala and life as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Life is a whirlwind, and my body is completely buzzing, through and through, in complete and utter anticipation of the wild and wonderful chaos beyond.