Getting my life in order....

Baby blankets, stickers and toys for the babies and children at my health center.

This past week I had the chance to help my friend Kate, a PCV in my training group, with her camp. The camp was a week long with different themes everyday. About 450 kids signed up, so you can imagine the amount of work that needed to go into this camp. The camp was a great success and a lot of children benefited from participating. The last day the kids received t-shirts and there was a little party, unfortunately my bus broke down on the way to Kate's camp (go figure) and I wasn't able to go :( Overall, it was great to see other camps so I can get an idea of what I might want to do for next year.



I had my Project Specialist, Ana Isabel, come and visit me this past week. She had the chance to view the apartment I want to live in. The only problem is the cost. Even though I live in a pretty rural site, the amount of living here is almost ridiculous. Unfortunately, there are no places to live here in Chiquimula, so the cost of living here is doubled. So the plan is to move out the 1st of January. I know my host family doesn't want to see me leave, but I also need my space. I live in a really tiny room and I have no work space. There is also no place to wash my clothes because the sink is always filled with dirty dishes, so instead of taking my laundry to get it cleaned I can finally have a space to do it myself... mom would be proud :) Since this apartment is newly renovated I have to buy everything... bed, dresser, tables, chairs.... so I'll be broke for a while. For Chrismas, I asked my parents to buy me a bed... lol.



I received a package from my grandmother this past week. Granadmas really know what to pack, its like they have this sixth sense. Games, puzzles, magazine, chocolate, stapler (that was essential, I needed one!), clothes, socks, stickers, toys, key chain, hair clips.... everything I can use or donate. Also, my awesome grandma has been collecting baby clothes for my health center. Tomorrow I am going to present all the baby blankets I have so far to my professional nurse. They are building a new maternity wing to our health center. The baby blankets would be a great incentive for mothers to have their births here instead of having them at home.



This week I am really going to go full speed ahead with my work here. I think I have a pretty basic level of Spanish to start running my own groups, besides my Health Promoter groups. This week I am going to talk with my educators and have them pick out 4 groups they think would really benefit from my program, I am going to put up a flyer in the women's municipality office at the muni to see if women are interested in cooking classes, gardens, health projects, etc. I am goung to talk to the director of the health commission to see if he would like me to train men in small towns how to build stoves. I also really want to work with the midwives here. The past couple of months have been a bit stagnant, and my goal is to make 2010 a busy year! But we will see.... this is all in retrospect.



It is a beautiful, quiet, Sunday morning here in Santa Maria Chiquimula and it is going to be a blessed week!

December = AIDS awareness month

Trying not to struggle through my Spanish...

My counterpart, Brenda and I

My Health Promoters and all the spectators right before the icebreaker!

The ribbons I gave to my health promoters during the workshop.

In honor of the 1st of December, I gave an HIV/AIDS workshop for my health promoters. I involved my counterpart, Brenda who is the rural health technician in my health center and my sitemate, Valerie.

Like many of my health presentations, you never know what to expect. Due to the lack of available space at my health center the meetings are normally held outside. This happened to be the case for this workshop. Well, for about the first 20 minutes of my workshop there were at least 70 people watching (people off the street, people waiting for consults)- we were pretty popular - which made the first icebreaker with my health promoters pretty hilarious:

The icebreaker is to get the participants confortable with the topic of the workshop, since we will be talking about sex, condoms, penis, vagina, homosexulaity, etc. The icebreaker is called "I wash my fruit" and starts with one person repeating a dialogue that we give them about how they wake up in the morning and 'clean themselves' so-to-speak. The dialogue goes like this in Enlgish: When I wake up, I wash my face, I wash my hands, and I wash my _____ (insert a type of fruit and the fruit represents a part of your body). So I said "peaches" and I pretended to wash my boobs :) Well.... when you have 70 people watching you, you can imagine the amount of laughter. People used banana as their penis, grapes as their scrotum, strawberries as their breasts, watermelon for their butt... it was so funny, they had a great time.

Overall, the workshop was a success. They were really motivated to try and get groups together in their community to participate in the same workshop. So I challenged them when we come back to meet again after the new year to give me at least one group that would be interested in hearing this workshop. So I am crossing my fingers that they pull through, I would love to stay busy and it would be amazing to spread the importance of HIV/AIDS education! Go Health Promoters!

Xela Ugly X-mas Sweater Party!

My sitemates and I. Steven and Val (minus Zane)

Everyone anxiously awaiting for their gifts.

The whole group with our beautifully tacky sweaters.

You can't have Christmas without having an ugly sweater Christmas party! As part of welcoming the new volunteers, my department, Totonicapan, along with Solola, threw together a Christmas party in honor of Steven, the only new volunteer in Toto. Ironically enough, Steven's site is Santa Maria Chiquimula, which leaves 4 PC volunteers in my town! Gotta say, our site it pretty cool :)

We celebrated the party in Xela, the nearest city to Toto. We exchanged x-mas gifts through a "White Elephant" exchange. We weren't allowed to spend more than Q20 which is equivalent to $2.24. The most interesting gifts that night were probably a g-string thong, a hand held mirror with a picture of a chippendale-type half naked man on the back, plastic yellow contruction hat, and a nasty looking fruit cake.

There were baked cookies, egg nogg and pleanty of Guatemala's finest ugly sweaters!

Gracias a Dios... A-maine!

Noah's Ark - Guate Style

All the children waiting for the parade to start

Cute little girl dressed as a clown, standing up in the back of a pick-up (safe, I know...)

All the Angels and Noah... can't have angels without Noah!

I experienced my first Evangelical Church experience. My host mother invited me to attend church with her and her girls. I went, a little reluctantly, only because once you form some sort of bond with a particular church here you are pretty much telling everyone in town what church you belong to and after my experience I think I'm stuck.

I have to say, I have never been in a church with so much sadness. After praise and worship everyone was on the floor crying, wailing, it was so sad I started tearing. I wasn't sure if the tears were for forgiveness, hardships or if that was how they worship here. To my surprise I understood almost all the sermon, I kept thinking to myself this would help with my Spanish. The best part was when they would say Amen, they pronounced it A-maine (like the state). I smiled from time to time at the odd sounding word because the enfasis was on the 'maine' part.

An embarassing part of my attendance was when the pastor introduced me to the congregation. Then he asked me to participat in a "caminatta", a parade. Well, I couldn't just say no. The more I think about it, I should have. This parade was for all the children in the church, to celebrate "all the lovely children of the world" so to speak. They asked me to be an angel. I think, no, I know I was the oldest "child" in that parade, and also the tallest. I walked all around town, dressed in all white with angel wings. On top of that the pastor had a sound system on his van and was using a microphone to announce to the town that I was an American working at the health center... if I already didn't stand out enough. There were a few times when I contemplated running down a side street or using the excuse I "need to use the bathroom" and never come back. Well, I didn't. But as soon as it was over I went home and retired my angel wings :)

Overall, the parade was really cute. The kids were dressed from anywhere from princesses, ducks, clowns, rabbits, lions, and the majority were put inside a pick-up truck decorated as Noah's Ark. I'm not sure yet if I'll call this my church, I guess you could say I'm still looking... but it was definitely an experience!! A-maine!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

The group minus 3, and minus the Guatemalan at the end :)

Our T-Day "family" that evening

We were bored and decided to make up "Guatemalan Interpreted Dances" I won, haha. It was really stupid, but I acted out giving birth, breast feeding and having "my baby" on my back. I was representing all the women who have babies here and their "phases" of child bearing.

Well.... Thanksgiving has come and gone. As much as I was missing all the traditional T-day food, my fellow PC friends and I were able to make do of our version of a Guatemalan Thanksgiving. We were able to hash out stuffing, sweet potatoes, corn bread, mashed potatoes, apple pie, rice, veggies.... and turkey!! Yes, we ate turkey :) My friends Ferney and Phil bought a turkey and to the best of their ability, plumped that sucker up. I remembered a story my mom told me when she lived in Peru. She told me they would feed their turkey beer to help marinade the meat before being slaughtered. Well before I could actualy find out the logistics to this new phenomenon my friends called, they started months before Thanksgiving.... come to find out that my mother's family only started 3 days prior... lol. Well, the turkey had the ride of his short lived life, one that he probably never remembered :) The turkey was a nice 13 pounds. The turkey was sent to the bucher and then my friend gutted and sewed up the turkey herself... gross. Another reminder we are in Peace Corps.

There were 10 people that came for this dinner.... by the time we were about to serve dinner, there were 25. While we were preparing dinner everyone was enjoying wine, relaxing, excited to eat "American Food" and earlier that day Ferney invited his host family for dinner. Well when you invited someone's family, you invite your WHOLE family. Let's just say the wine kicked into a lot sooner and we were all quietly freaking out that we didn't have enough food. We put out heads together and told ourselves we would probably not be eating dinner tonight... much our dismay. If I wasn't laughing so hard at this sudden change of scenery I might have shed a tear. I whipped up a famous American Tradition called Onion Rings.... the thought behind this was that they wouldn't know and it could serve as a plate filler :) Everyone manned their stations: turkey, rice, salad, potatoes, veggies, gravy, rice, onions rings and we formed our very own "Thanksgiving Soup Kitchen". Instead of "this is so good, what great turkey, pass me some more potatoes" you heard "salad me!, turkey me!, rice me!, that is way too much gravy!, we are missing a potato person!, where is my wine?!" Needless to say given our circumstances, we all ate that night, and we were all stuffed! It was totally the story with the boy with 2 fish and 5 loaves of bread! God was good :)

The Tallest People in Central America

We were a little miserable...
Admiring the view...


Looking into oblivion...

Tallest people in Central America!!

Me against the sun.

The crater of the volcano!

Another volcano behind us and the sun casting a shadow.

Here comes the sun....

The sun is slowly coming out...

All the volcanos in the distance and one erupting!

Waiting for the sun to rise freeezzing!

Above the clouds!!

Chuck and his huge bag!

The group walking towards the volcano.... through the clouds....

So after leaving my site, we made our way to the nearest city called Quetzaltenango or Xela (sheyla) for short. We treated ourselves to Mcdonalds and I don't think we ever had better service ever at a McDonalds! They pumped your ketchup for you, pre-bussed tables, running in and out of the bathrooms making sure they were clean... all American McDonalds were put to shame. I think Chuck was even looking for future Brio staff :)

The next morning we headed to San Marcos to hike Valcano Tajumulco! The tallest peak in Central America! It was definitely a difficult hike. Carrying what felt like 100 pound bags for 4 hours to base camp. Then settting up camp in freezing cold weather. To say we had a good night sleep would be like saying eating a whole pint of Haagen Dazs was healthy for you. First it was freezing, and during the night condensation formed inside the tent, so if you moved you would get splashed in the face with water... ugh, it sucked. So we all woke up at 4am to finish the rest of the hike in pitch black darkness. When we got out of our tents and looked up at the sky, wow.... I have never seen so many brilliant stars in my life! It was so amazingly beautiful!! When we got to the top it was freezing and we all waited for the sun to rise. No words can describe how amazing the view was. You really felt like you were on top of the world. Unfortunately I didn't charge my camera battery, I actually left the battery charger at my host family's house, so I didn't take as many pictures as I wanted. But when the sun started to rise, it was amazing....

After the hike we headed back to Antigua and then Chuck left that Wednesday.... :( Overall, the trip was amazing and I'm so glad Chuck was able to come and visit me!!

Beautiful Lago Atitlan

Volcano San Pedro from the hotel.
One of the balconies at the hotel.

Trying to take a picture with the volcano in the background.

Chuck taking off!

Coming down the zip-line!

In our zip-line gear ready for business!!

So after our dreadful overnight bus ride, a 2 hour or so wait at the stinky bus station, an hour bus ride to Antigua and then another 3 hour bus ride to the Lake.... we might have been a little crabby. I had a problem at first with explaining everything that we were doing to Charles, as well as translating... so adding lack of sleep, and frustration, I'm pretty sure Charles has images of drop kicking me to the floor.... thankfully he didn't. I got better though! It was weird to have a visitor, or anyone for that matter that I had to explain everything to because I've been so used to people being in the same boat as me. So this was a learning experience for me as well... so next time he visits my Spanish will have improved and I'll be a better tour guide.

We stayed at a beautiful little place called Casa del Mundo that was only accessable by boat. Each night they served family styled meals where you were able to meet everyone that was staying at the same hotel. We met some really great people from all over... France, Canada, Holland, various US States... and the food was always really good! We were also able to meet up with my sitemate Valerie, who was supposed to stay with us at the same hotel, but the reservations were mixed up. Both Chuck and I, Val and her friend went to a nature reserve and zip-lined through an old coffee farm/beautiful jungle-like scenery (not really sure what to call it being so close to the lake).

Chuck and I did some exploring at some of the little towns around the lake and then we headed to my site, Santa Maria Chiquimula where we had lunch with my host family. Unfortunately, we arrived too late and we were only there for a few hours. He also wasn't feeling too well... after a long 3 hour trip from the lake and then taking a pick-up for an hour to my site while winding in and out of the mountains...

And I also found out that Chuck is a seriously better bargainer than I am... I am totally a wuss. Chuck had no shame. But he got some great Christmas presents out of it!!

Ahh this is a soo lobely!

The view from the top, you can see Temple 1
The view from the top of the "Stairs"! I wasn't up here for long, the height was too scary for me...

The view from the bottom!

Chuck and I in front of Temple 1

The famous Temple 1 from on top of Temple 2

Borris our animated tour guide telling us about the human sacrifices performed on this rock! They didn't chop their heads off, only druged them with mushrooms and cut out their hearts while still alive!

Standing on top of one of the ruins. One of the many great views of Tikal.

Charles holding the taranchula! Guiding it up his arm!

The poor litte Chiwawa all by itself in the middle of the Flores airport.

Charles and I getting on the plane to Flores!

TIKAL!!! What more can I say?! This place was definitely a great wonder of the world. We decided to take a plane to Flores... a last minute decision which I think saved us a good amount of sleep deprivation, but then that changed when we took an overnight bus from Flores to the capital... more about that later.

Flores was about 1 and 15min from Tikal. It is a small little town in the center of a lake. It was a very quiet, cute little town, almost too quiet. We stayed in a pretty cool hostel. We met people from all around the world staying there. You had the option of renting hammocks, communal rooms or little tree houses. There was no hot water, but it was so humid there it wasn't needed. They had a restaurant and travel agency within our hostel which was definitely a bonus.

We arrived at the Flores airport and while we were getting our luggage we both couldn't help but notice a little chiwawa on top of all the luggage. We watched how everyone grabbed their belongings and eventually the poor guy was left in the middle of the airport, in his little carrying case. Probably one of the funniest/cutest things. So we took a picture :)

We found out that if you went to the park after 3 pm your ticket was still valid for the next day. So we took a little bus at 3 pm to the park and walked around the main square of Tikal until 5:30. It was definitely amazing! There were no people around so we were able to explore without all the tourists and take pictures without people in the background. However, on our way back to the parking lot we got lost! We both were freaking out, Charles thought we would be sleeping in the jungle and I thought we would never get back to our hostel and the whole trip was going to be ruined! Well... we made it out... in pitch black darkness. We "enjoyed" a nice bus ride back with an angry French couple and we found out later we almost ran over boa contrictors :) But our driver was pretty awesome. We were pretty sure he knew everyone in town. He reminded me of a taller, grey-haired Danny Divito who spoke Spanish and needed to pull up his pants every 5 minutes... and probably shower.

The next day we got up really early for our guided tour of Tikal. We had a young, dynamic, tour guide named Borris. He like to call us "Mis Chavos" or "My friends" and every time he talked it was full of animation and full of information, so much sometimes I just stopped listening and enjoyed watching him get so into his explanation. He was great. We were able to climb almost every ruin and we definitely took tons of pictures. One of the first things we saw on our tour was a taranchula! It was pretty nasty... and Charles and I held it! This of course after it took a dump on one of the Australian tourists. It was definitely a beautiful experience (not the spider, Tikal), one I know we both will never forget.

Later that night we took an overnight bus ride to Guate. This bus was so small, it was small for me, imagine how uncomfortable it was for Charles!! There was no way to get comfortable. Needless to say we were both slap happy during our 7 hour ride. At different points during the trip I would wake up to Charles pointing out the window because the bus stopped and it appeared as though they were loading illegal cargo onto the bus due to random people running to and from the bus to a nearby alley. Then I woke up half asleep to turn my head and find myself face to face with a man sitting on a stool in the middle of the aisle. Charles later told me he ended up laying newspapers on the floor and fell asleep. We got off at a sketchy bus stop in Guatemala City... where people were sprawled out on the floor or couch dead asleep, nasty bathrooms and dirty old men. The shuttle was late, but it came... and took us to Antigua where we took another shuttle (after I made everyone late by getting coffee... the bus driver was none too thrilled with me and on top of that no one opended the windows! it was so hot on that bus!) to the lake. Our 12 hour trip definitely made us really cranky and poor Charles ended up getting sick. Good thing we were at the lake for 3 days...so we took a much needed day off the first day we were at the lake.

Cafe Americano

All the coffee trees which are being shaded by trees... one of 2 ways to grow coffee.

The coffee bean inside the red berry.

A Picture of a coffee tree... the red berries mean they are ripe and ready to be picked!

A picture of what the coffee tour looked like.

Charles reading the info about how coffee originated before our tour.

Well... Charles came, and he went... I will definitely be on the sad train for a while. I was definifely a spoiled little puppy :) Going from 3 full meals a day to my standard oatmeal and cornfalkes for breakfast and one fried egg for dinner will definitely take some adjusting. Then by the time I'm adjusted my parents will have arrived and I'll have to start all over again :)

The trip was nothing short of amazing! Poor Charles, I ran him to the ground. We went all over Guatemala and the traveling definitely took its toll on his health a few times. We started the trip with a coffee farm tour. I think Charles liked that, being the coffee lover he is. We were able to see how they grow, harvest and mass produce coffee. Guatemala I believe is #6 in coffee exports.

After the coffee farm we took a music tour. Basically a tour of all the different instruments that have been used and originataed in Guatemala. At the end of the tour we saw a video of the different departments of Guatemala and it showed how they use the instruments for ceremonies, fairs and holidays.

After the 2 tours we went to visit my host family from training. Charles gave them banana bread as a gift and we ate a yummy chicken dish. Charles and I should have switched plates because I got the bigger piece of chicken... I also learned that this wasn't his first time eating corn tortillas...