Going To The Chapel...

I came back from the states yesterday. Although the trip was short it was completely needed. I was able to see Charles and my family and spend time with them at least one more time. When I arrived in Columbus Thursday night it had been a very long day. I got up at 6 am Guatemalan time and didn’t arrive in the States until 11:50 pm (9:50 pm Guatemala). Needless to say I was tired but it was nice to be home, well, more or less. Charles picked me up from the airport waiting for me not only with open arms but with a Dr. Pepper… (for those that know me, me and the DP are BFFs), I was beyond happy. The next day was a whirlwind of errands and Charles couldn’t have been more helpful and patient driving me place to place. If it wasn’t for him I don’t know how I would have been able to accomplish everything I needed to do. I was able to buy a rehearsal dinner dress, bridesmaid dress and shoes all in one day. I kept the tag on my rehearsal dinner dress and was able to return it to a different Banana Republic and saved $75, exchanged my shoes the day of the wedding for cheaper ones and found the bridesmaid dress on sale for $47 when it was originally $185. So it was a great bargain-shopping weekend along with a beautiful wedding.
The day of the wedding I had my hair done only to have it fall out during the bridal party pictures before the wedding. So when we got back to the church one of the bridesmaids completely redid my hair and in the middle of redoing it I had to take pictures in the church with my family. This all took place 45 minutes before the wedding started. I think there are 3 sets of photos where I have my hair different. I’m not gonna lie, it was weird seeing my brother getting married, I think I’m still weirded out. But Kristen, my brother’s wife, is amazing. I’m really happy I can call her family.
I think the most embarrassing moment of the weekend was when I signed a poster of a picture of Ben and Kristen. My verbal diarrhea kicked in, but this time it came out on paper. I wrote: Congratulations! I’m so glad I was able to come back! Remember not only is Thoennes always mispronounced it is also a game…” What?!? There was a point when I was seriously contemplating gluing something over my comment, even throwing the whole thing in the garbage. It is not like I can cross my comment out. It was on a keepsake they will have the rest of their lives, probably even frame… ugh. I had Charles read the damage and not only did he laugh out loud he couldn’t even give me any words of encouragement. The only person that laughed was my grandma. I love my grandma. Grandmas are awesome. Not only did she send me back to Guatemala with 7 books but 48 protein bars and a deck of cards. Hopefully those protein bars will help with the diarrhea. Speaking of diarrhea, thank God my grandma can’t smell anymore because she shared a room with me in the hotel and there were times when I thought I was going to pass out.
The most memorable moments of the wedding reception were when my brother started a YMCA train where everyone in the reception weaved in and out of the dinner tables signing YMCA . Songs like Kriss-Kross and MC Hammer played and I also realized my grandpa is the Latin version of The Godfather. I meant to ask Charles how many times my mother asked him how tall he was. Every time my mother sees Charles I’m pretty sure she thinks Charles has grown an inch more. Overall, the wedding was beautiful and everyone had a great time.
On Sunday my family and I walked around Easton, I said goodbye and then Charles and I went to see the Pixar movie “Up”… great movie! It was so cute! I have never been disappointed with a Pixar movie. Next year they are coming out with Toy Story 3! Charles later that night took me out to a nice dinner and I tried tartar for the first time… not sure if I’ll try it again. It was definitely interesting.
I’m back in Guatemala and as usual it is raining. I jumped right back into work. Tomorrow we are giving a presentation about diarrhea (go figure) to the health promoters in our clinic, and we are also teaching how to give a presentation. This weekend I was invited to go to the beach but I haven’t decided if I want to go yet. It will be with 6 other volunteers and 4 host families, but they are letting everyone sleep out. So we will see. A week from tomorrow, July 1st, everyone finds out what site they will be assigned to for the next 2 years. Everyone pray for me that I will be blessed with a great cite. Pray that the people I will work with will want to work with me and that the community will accept me. Amen!

Song: Moby; Natural Blues
Missing: Charles
Looking forward to: Becoming fluent
Mood: Content
Recent achievement: Killing a spider by myself in my room this morning.
Good idea: Wearing layers to bed to prevent massive mosquito bites.
Bad idea: Playing Monopoly with a 6, 7, & 9 year old…. That lasted about 30 minutes.

FBT:HSM3

Food I miss the most: Dr. Pepper and Snickers
Reading: Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Band listening to: Kings of Leon
Weeks in Guatemala: 7
Looking forward to: My brother's wedding this weekend!

I just came back from FBT (Field Based Training) which was 8 days long. It is basically an intense week of freaking out. My training group: RHPH (Rural Home Preventive Health) has 16 volunteers and we were split into 2 groups of 8. Each group was sent to a part of Guatemala, about 4 hours away from where I currently live, to visit a RHPH volunteer who has been working in Guatemala for 1 year. After being in that volunteers’ cite for 3 days we then switched with the other group of 8 that were visiting another RHPH volunteer. However, this past week was filled with workshops and presentations in front of a variety of different groups and people affiliated with health or in need of health education. All in Spanish, of course! It was very intense and nerve racking. A few examples of some presentations were visiting a daycare where we taught about 30 little children a song about washing their hands. I’m going to try to upload a video, it is so cute. However, all the kids were filthy. Dirty faces, snot everywhere, visible lice, dirty clothing; just dirty. That was one of the reasons why we were there. The workers in this particular daycare were fed up with the families bringing their kids dirty. So we helped them come up with an action plan so they could get the parents on the same page. You would think it is common knowledge to clean your kids, but this is a poor and improvised town and sometimes the parents either don’t care or can’t afford basic amenities like shampoo or detergent; even running water.
On the way to the next town we stopped at a place to enjoy the hot springs. The hot water was natural water from the mountains that was being heated by the nearby volcano, it was awesome. The scenery during our whole trip was just breathtaking. So many mountains, green everywhere, some points we were so high in altitude our microbus would be completely surrounded by clouds.
One of the last presentations I gave was in front of about 30 women. It was actually about nutrition, up my alley a bit. We were able to feet about 75 people for less one Guatemalan dollar each (in American money it would be equivalent to about 9 dollars to feed 75 people… sooooo cheap!!), it was fantastic. We introduced soy protein, a cheaper method to get protein in their diet, and taught them how to cook it and make a cheap, healthy meal for their family.
Overall, the trip was a lot of work, but very rewarding. It was a great way to introduce us to what our work will be while we are here for 2 years. The 2 things that stuck out the most was almost spending the night in a hostel that turned out to be a brothel… our technical trainer accidentally found out by one of the children living in the hostel, so after 15 minutes of being there we took our bags and loaded up the bus to a different hostel. But, that would have made a great story if we actually did get to stay there! The whole week we were always exhausted and my room in the last hostel actually had a tv so every night the majority of my group would cram in one room and watch movies in Spanish (with English subtitles of course). Starz was our channel of choice and after every movie they kept constantly advertising HSM3 (High School Musical 3). If any of you have siblings or relatives in the vicinity of 5-16 years of age you would have an idea of how popular these movies are, unfortunately. Well, we ended up getting completely sucked into this phenomenon in only 3 short days (I blame the language barrier and lack of channel selections). So on our last night we all bought snacks and sang along with the subtitles on the tv…. The other Guatemalan’s staying in the other rooms in the hostel had to think we were all on drugs or just furthered their point that Gringos are crazy. We all totally had crushes on Zack Effron after watching the movie, oh High School musical…..

Now off to Columbus for Ben & Kristen's wedding!

Mayan Ceremony

May 30, 2009

This past Saturday the Peace Corps sponsored a Mayan Ceremony at the Peace Corps Office. It was definitely an experience I will always remember. The Mayan's truely have a beautiful culture. The Mayan Priestess had many different candles that represented different blessings. She talked about how everything on the earth connected to each other through energy provided by our Creator and how everything needed to be loved because love is the most powerful energy to have. I wanted to upload the pictures first, but I will write more about the ceremony later.

Tamales: Breakfast for Champions

This morning my host mother served me tamales for breakfast. I think I almost cried, I think I would have if I didn’t remind myself that I was 25 years old. I really don’t like tamales. I thought I did, but I realized really fast the night before when they were having them for dinner that I would not like them. I didn’t eat dinner with my family that night because I had eaten an earlier dinner in Antigua. I remember doing a little jig in my head knowing that I was able to skip out on tamale night. Well tamales are served for breakfast apparently. I remember sitting at the table watching my host sister and her son eat a heaping bowl of cornflakes and milk thinking, yes, this is exactly how I wanted to start my morning, and then I saw banana leaves in the background slowly springing up around my host mother as she prepared my breakfast. I said a silent prayer. I closed my eyes. I felt a little nauseous. When I stopped nervously dropping my Lipton tea bag in and out of my coffee cup I saw my host mother come over with a big bowl of tamales. I think I vomited in my mouth a little. I kept thinking how in the hell am I going to be able to get out of this one. Maybe if I squish it around a bunch it will look like I ate a lot. No, it only drew attention to the fact that I was playing with my food. What if I slowly dropped it on the floor so either the cat or the dogs could eat? Nope, they were nowhere to be found. So I took a few deep breaths and pretended I was eating cornflakes with milk. Cornflakes with milk, cornflakes with milk, cornflakes with corn, cornflakes with tomato sauce, milk with corn, milk with cornflakes warm corn and tomato sauce, tamales. No use, nothing could mask the fact that I was eating tamales. I knew there was no way I could finish my “breakfast” so I took the risk of waiting until my host mom saw that I wasn’t eating. Fortunately she was holding her 9 month old grandchild. Thank God for babies. This baby could be crying, vomiting and pooping all over her and she would still be as happy as a lark. The funny thing was the baby did poop and let out a massive fart, but it wasn’t all over my host mother, thankfully, then I for sure would have vomited. My host mother was in a good mood, score, well, she’s always in a good mood, but the last thing I wanted to do was insult her food and not eat it. I felt like I was on American Gladiators and I was just about to face the “gauntlet”. How would I explain to her that I didn’t like her food without actually saying I didn’t like it? What Would Uncle Jesse Do? So I sat there like I was punished for not finishing my food, but this time I wish it were broccoli. Eventually my host mom noticed and asked if I liked my tamales. I started to kick my shoes off, I stared at all the dancing flies on the table that were eating the cornflakes I wanted to eat in the first place that were left over from my host family, and I blurted out that my stomach hurt. I suck. But seriously, I would not have been able to eat tamales for breakfast. I told her I was sorry and I love her food but my stomach was not feeling well. I felt guilty, so I sat there awkwardly, like a dog with its tail between its legs. I gave my food a proper burial. I placed a napkin over my plate. There are a few uses for napkins here. Mostly they are used to block the millions of flies that parade the air and the other is to wrap food. Placing the napkin over the plate let my host mother know that someone else could eat it. She took my plate, opened a cupboard and added some other “leftovers”. This scared me a bit, someone would be eating my unwanted tamales and they would be stored in the cupboard. I decided to get up from the table while I had the chance, I thanked her and apologized again and then I found refuge in my room. My only hope is that would be the last round I would have to fight with tamales, but that would be like saying Guatemalan’s don’t like corn. I’m going to have to build a tolerance for tamales fast because there is not always going to be a baby around and my family already thinks I have too much diarrhea, only time will tell.

Charlotte’s Destroyed Web

May 27, 2009

When I first moved into my host family’s house, my first night of occupancy included a 6 legged roommate. This ugly little dude showed its nasty face while it was crawling out of a crack in the corner of my wall. It was as if the thing knew I was looking at it and before I had time to even think of how I was planning on killing it, it sprinted back into the wall. I sucked it up, told myself I was being a baby and convinced myself that thing was never going to show its ugly face. Wrong. I was as wrong as trying to tell my host family it is ok to have ice cream after dinner. If you saw their faces it was as if I told them the Virgin Mary never existed. Apparently, you will get really sick if you eat ice cream at night because it is cold. Hence you are hard pressed to find anything cold in this country. Anyways, I woke up one morning and happened to catch something scurry over my head on the wall above my bed. Well look who showed its face. Mr. Nasty. I jumped out of bed, grabbed a shoe and squished that sucker so hard. Then out of the corner of my eye, after thinking how foolish this thing was to run across the wall, I saw legs popping out of the same corner in the wall. This ugly dude has family!?! Hell no, this is not going to fly. I knew this was going to be the start of a war. I looked around my room trying to see if there was anything flammable I could scorch it with, and then I realized my family would probably think I was crazy and kick me out. I took a deep breath and let it be. Mind you, while sitting in bed I looked up at the wall about every 3 seconds and then proceeded to have nightmares about giant grapefruit-sized spiders falling in my bed. In the past 3 nights I have woken up twice to turn my lights on because I was sure I was sleeping with a spider. When I finally stopped thinking about my furry enemy, I walk into my room to find an even bigger spider on the floor NEXT to my bed. This sucker has a fat uncle! This time I brought in my heavy artillery; my host mother and her trusty broom. First, I asked her if she liked killing spiders, then I paused for a second realizing how stupid of a question that was. She looked me in the eyes and said “Vamos”, she also summoned her eldest daughter who happened to be carrying a mop. Both women and their choice weapons made a grand entrance into my room while I half-assed lead the way thinking the whole time the fat uncle was going to attack us, and with one single sweep of my host mom’s broom, the bastard was smeared across my makeshift tile floor. My host mother smiled and let out a cute laugh, all the while my mouth was wide open. That was it?! That guy basically committed suicide. I was totally ready to move furniture, strategically pick up items on the floor… scream? He was totally the fat uncle. The fat uncle who was probably too drunk and thought we were giant flies. When I was by myself I starred at the smear for a minute. It was so gross. As I type this I am looking at the smear, it is still gross. I became brave after the murder and decided to check behind my bed. Low and behold the fat uncle had a fat sister! At that point I was completely grossed out with the poop stain on the floor and freaked out/pissed that the fat uncle had planned a family day out. I mustered up some courage, grabbed the broom myself, (this time I needed show who was boss) and made sure the fat sister could taste her fat brother’s guts that were still left on the broom. What’s next, I’ll wake up in the morning to a wall of spiders carrying egg sacks? Who knows what else is in that wall, I really don’t want to know. Ever. But if they ever decide to make an appearance, there is one thing for sure; I will probably ask my host mother to kill it.