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!
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!
No comments:
Post a Comment