Hello September!

Another "Reina de Salubrista" aka Health Queen pageant has come and gone! This year Nancy, one of the professional nurses at my health center represented Santa Maria Chiquimula. When I arrived I found her waiting outside waiting for her clothes! Everyone was dressed for the "traditional" round where you wear traditional Mayan clothing and she was still waiting for her clothes to arrive from another nurses' house. She then told me she didn't have "cinta" which is a handwoven ribbon woven into your hair. So I told her I would try to find her cinta in the market. I ran and tried to find someone from my health center to help me find cinta - cause I had no clue where to look or even know how much it would cost. So within 20 minutes we found a store, bought the cinta - just in time for the peagent to start. That was my gift to her :)

Nancy, showing off her personality in her "fantasy" costume

Nancy and I right before she went out in her "formal" wear.

The venue for the "Health Queen" pageant - downtown Totonicapan in the town's teatre. pretty, right?! Night and day from last year's competition! No firecrackers were set off here!

I wish I could say we are almost done with the raining season here, but we still have at least 2 1/2 more months of this dreary, cold, wet season that lasts for half a year. It has been raining non-stop for the past 12 hours and has been raining everyday for almost 2 weeks straight. The weather reports state that it will rain straight for another 32 hours! All of PC is at a standfast which means we are not allowed to leave our sites due to the potential dangers that may be presented while on the road. For example, the many mudslides that are occuring as I type, flooded roads, blocked roads, and even streets and bridges giving out. So I am ok with staying home - although it can get a bit borning at times.

I just realized Tuk hasn't been around for a while and then I found out he was snacking on the bathroom garbage! Let's just say he is grounded - which means in about 10 minutes he will forget why I was mad at him. He is so gross sometimes!

This coming week every health center in my department of Totonicapan will take an excursion for a few days for a holiday break around Guatemalan's Independence Day. This year the plan is to travel to Livingston, Izabal which is on the clear oposite side of Guatemala (Eastern side). However, with all the rain happening I'm not even sure if PC will allow a bunch of PC volunteers to make the trip which will be unfortunate. Just recently a few PC volunteers were in a terrible car accident which left a doctor, 2 nurse assistants and the driver of the car dead while traveling on a health center excursion, the volunteers were hurt but are now recovering. So with this recent news I'm not too sure we will be taking this trip. I am just so grateful the volunteers survived and my thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the deceased.

Yesterday my health promoters had their final exam. Overall, I was very pleased with how it turned out. After reading all of their exams they really understood all the material I gave them through out the year and I am very proud of them :) I am still in the process of watching a few health promoters give individual health talks to their own groups in their communities and watching them give their presentations has been very fun and rewarding. On the 16th of this month I will be having a meeting for new health promoters! A year has past! So I am hoping I get a nice turn out. On the 24th of this month I will be graduating my 10 health promoters. I will be presenting my health promoters with a certification of completion of the course and a Health Promoter ID badge with their picture and name.

My health promoters, Francisco, the president of the health promoters (on the left), and Manuel, the vice president (on the right), giving a health talk to almost 100 people fit into 2 tiny rooms. You can't see but there is a room next to Manuel that was packed with women who were listening to their presentations.

Here I am sitting in the middle of the mob listening to Francisco and Manuel give their presentations.

Another angle of the room.

So I bought internet for a day, and low and behold the darn thing doesn't sign me off every minute now... interesting. Maybe I'll try buying a full month soon and see if my internet is now back to normal.

Felisa, my wonderful friend and coworker, with her little boy, Martin, and her loquacious husband on one of our trips out into the communities. On our last trip he told me I would have to get married soon because of my patience with his kids. (haha, I have no clue what that means) You can't see, but there is a little girl standing behind Felisa who didn't make the picture. During the whole car ride she played with my hair and the little boy liked to kicked me. He told me I had a "doll face" and I would have very pretty babies :) haha. Don't worry mom, I have no plans on procreating anytime soon :)

I can already tell it is going to be a cold night! The breeze coming from my balcony door is really cold! On Thursday I found a man selling wool blankets. They make them specially from Momostenango, another municipality of Totonicapan. So I used it for the first time that night and MAN what a difference! I have never slept better! Wool blankets are the way to go! So instead of relying on Tuk's body heat - to which he usually bails on me and moves to the floor because he gets too hot - I now have an appropriate form on warmth at night. I also found a man that makes tables on market days and I finally ordered a kitchen table! Al fin!! So now my house will somewhat look complete. Next task is organizing my desk space and then plans to start a garden on my porch. But that will be next month's project - if weather permits.

Chuck talked about how he ate sushi last night.... I haven't had sushi in about a year and a half... it sounds soooo good. Hopefully my next blog entry will be about my trip to Livingston!

Kawilawib, se cuida, take care!