Peace Corps Guatemala Volunteer!!

This past Friday, July 17, 2009, I was officially sworn into the Peace Corps! Very exciting! We had our swearing in at the US ambassador's house and the ambassador swore us in. My host parent's were there to whitness along with all 28 other volunteers in my training class, their host families and various PC staff. My host dad made the suit I am wearing as a gift! It is pretty awsome.

The night before my host family had a little going away dinner of pop and Dominos :) They went around the table and each one said a goodbye to me and as a gift they bought me a purse, it was so inredibly nice, what a great family. This past weekend my training and I celebrated our newly found freedom in Antigua, which is where I am right now. Later this morning my friend Anna and I are headed back to our host towns to pack up the rest of our stuff and then we are going to head to our towns. I'm a little nervous... I'm on my own! I'm a big kid now!

NEW ADDRESS!

So I found out I can recieve mail in my site! So don't send it to the Antigua address, send mail to this address:

Andrea Thoennes - PCV
Oficina de Correos
Santa Maria Chiquimula, Totonicapan
Guatemala, Centro America

I know there are no numbers, even a street name, but the mail will go directly to the post office in my town and I'll just pick it up from there. Make sure all mail is really secure, nothing flimsy, otherwise mail here is opened and things are stolen. Writing religious symbols on packages seem to help too, but who knows.

Santa Maria Chiquimula, Totonicapan

July 10, 2009

I can now call Santa Maria Chiquimula, Totonicapan my new home for the next 2 years! I just finished my last night here and then I return back to my training cite for the last week of my training. I can’t believe it has only been 3 months, it feels like much longer. I was in Santa Maria Chiquimula (or for name sake, SMC) for 5 days visiting the town, finding a family to live with for 3 months and visiting the health clinic. My experience so far has been wonderful. I am about 3-4 hours drive away from my training cite and my town sits on top of a mountain! There are only about 3,000 inhabitants that live in the central part of town, or urban area if you will, and there are about 35,000 indigenous people that live in the outlining 20 or so communities. The language in these communities is about 85% Quiche, which is one of 20 Mayan languages here in Guatemala, and the rest speak Spanish and Quiche. So I found out today that if I want to gain the trust of the community I am going to have to start learning Quiche, oh yeah, let’s first work on learning Spanish…
The towns are immensely poor. For instance, the other day a woman was dropped off at the health clinic after her roof collapsed on her. I also found out after later her 11 year old son died in the same accident 3 months earlier. These homes are made out of water and dirt and when the raining season comes homes cannot withstand the rain and there is no money to buy better materials for a roof.
I am really excited to be in this town! The people in my health clinic seem really excited to be working with me and I think we will all make a great team. I keep coming up with millions of ideas but I have to keep reminding myself that I have 2 years here but there is so much that needs help here, SO much. I spent the whole day interviewing everyone in the health clinic in order to get a better perspective on how the health clinic functions and how they work with the community. I am really glad I paid attention in Spanish class because I think I would be freaking out with all the Spanish I have been trying to comprehend. Everyone here thinks I am a native speaker…. until I start actually speaking. Then when they realize I can pretty much comprehend what they are saying they speak even faster!
They didn’t waste any time when I got here with introductions. I had to present myself, in Spanish, to all of the health clinic staff, I spoke in front of all the mayors representing each outlining community (there were about 100 men in this room), each time there was a group of women they made me give a speech… ugh, it was an exhausting week. I am heading back tomorrow but first I am having lunch with some of my PC friends in a neighboring city.
I am going to make French toast and corn bread for my host family this week, I’m kinda excited J I started to learn how to cook for myself since I’ve been here for 5 days, mom, you would be proud J and I’m sure dad, you are laughing. Poco a Poco….

Cite Assignment

Before I start, can I just say that I just “killed” a huge butterfly that looked like a beetle mixed with a wasp mixed with a tarantula flying – more like spinning out of control – throughout my room. After losing my heartbeat for about a minute and running out of my room without shoes or socks on I came back in with a broom to kill it. However, on my way into my room I had to a kill a huge fat spider crawling its way into my room, go figure, and a huge daddy long leg mosquito that looked more like a dragonfly. As I was squishing this moth-like creature it somehow escaped through the door and as it was trying to fly away it ran head on into one of the kids in my house (Andreas). Let me just say that Andreas saw this creature flying towards him and let it ram into his chest and he kept on walking! This was like old news to him, almost as if that is supposed to happen. I mean I shouldn’t be shocked, he was on his hands and knees earlier in the day looking for spiders in the dark places of the house… really?! There are brown recluse spiders her, might I add.
Today was a BIG day! It was our cite assignments! Everyone in my training group found out where they will be living for the next 2 years. I will be in the department of Toconicapan in a town called Santa Maria Chiquimula. This is what I will be calling home for the next 2 years! It is also not too far away from Antigua either (where I basically live now), only about 3 ½ - 4 hours. There are 8 other people from my technical group that are also in my department which is a lot but they are all spread out through Totonicapan (about 45 mintues to 2 hours away). In my cite I have 2 citemates, both in 2 different technical groups (Healthy Schools and Municipal Development), so I will at least have some American company. There are approx. 40,000 people in my town but only 5,000 of those people are urban, the rest are indigenous and live in outlining communities, which is a lot! 35,000 rural people!! Bastante! 97% are indigenous and speak the Mayan language, Quiche… so I will soon be learning a new language. So far the neat things that stand out in my town are the waterfalls that are close to my town and they are known for a special type of bread called “shecas”. This coming Monday we are all meeting with the doctor and the health technician in our town’s clinics to go over expectations and goals for the next 2 years. Then we are off to our cites for 4 days to find a place to live for the next 3 months and meet people in the town. When we come back we have out swear in date as volunteers on the 17th of July and then I am off to my cite!

I just finished making oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for my host family… all I had to say was chocolate and their faces lit up…. They are so cute.