10 Days!

10 Days from today my wonderful boyfriend, Charles, will be visiting me in Guatemala! He will be here for 13 days! The first 3 days we will be in Antigua. Saturday we are going to take a tour of a coffee farm (for the coffee fanatic in Chuck :) Then we will have lunch with my host family at their home. Sunday we made reservations at a 5 star restaurant called Panza Verde (Green Bellied) to celebrate our 1 year anniversary! Monday we wake up at 4:00 am to make a 8-9 hour bus ride to Tikal, Peten. Here we will see all the Mayan ruins! (this is where they filmed Apacolypto). Early morning Weds. we will make another long trip to Panajachel, Solola and stay at the beautiful Lago Atitlan for 3 days (we'll need a lot of relaxation after that looong bus ride and waking up really early or the past 3 days). Saturday we will leave the lake and make our way to my site, Santa Maria Chiquimula, where he will see my town and we will have lunch with my new host family. They are all excited... they are going to make caldo for him (it is this awesome soup they make here!) We will then head back to Xela and meet up with a bunch of my friends to prepare for our volcano hike. Sunday and Monday we will be hiking the tallest peak in Cental American, Volcan Tajumulco! It is something like 2 miles long! We head back to Antigua Monday night , relax Tuesday, then Charles is off Weds. morning :(

This is a MUCH needed vacation! I am definitely looking forward to resting my brain from thinking in Spanish and just enjoying the beauty of Guatemala :) Then a month after Charles leaves, my parents will be here for Christmas!!! So excited! So I am counting down the days and hours until Charles gets here, so sooon!

So hopefully I'll be able to upload those videos this weekend, and I PROMISE!... I will be updating my blog more frequently.... I have no excuse!

Mountain Tena

This past weekend I hiked a mountain in the town of one of my fellow PC Volunteers - Phillipa. She lives about 2 hours away from me. The mountain was called Tena (Tenah), I forget what it stands for. The hike took about 4 hours. It was a pretty steep incline to the top. It was a nice workout :) Nov. 15 & 16 I'll be hiking Volcano Tajumulo, the tallest peak in Central America with friends and Charles! I can't wait!

Town Fair

Well for those of you who follow Facebook. I've uploaded pictures from our health center deparment-wide beauty pageant and from the Quetzaltenango soccer game. The health center beauty pageant was pretty nuts. It was basically like Miss America but with live fireworks (in the building) and women that don't smile. My health center came in 3rd. The soccer game was pretty awesome. They are called the Xelaju (Shay-la-who). Over the weekend I'm going to try to upload videos from those 2 events with a better internet connection so you can all see how crazy this stuff can be!

In September my own had one of their 2 town fairs. This one was the smaller of the two. Vendors come all over to sell anything from plastic toys to weird deserts. One of the highlights of the fair was the live music. There is a huge white Catholic church in my town that has a fairly large courtyard. There were 2 stages set up with 2 bands (both playing at the same time, of course). BUT! What threw me off and kinda freaked me out were the people dressed in weird masked-costumes dancing in a roped-off stage in from of each band. People were gathered around all the dancers watching them dance. SO.... my next goal is to be one of those masked dancers for our next town fair. I would be dancing for 5 days, from 8am until 6pm in some freaked-out costume! Then the last day there is this big unvieling! My sitemate, Zane, who works in the town hall said he would ask around... I'll let you guys know :)

I SUCK at this blog stuff

So I've been meaning to update my blog and realized I've waited over 2 months to do that... clearly a lot has happened, so for however long it takes, I'm going to try to fill everyone in! I swear I'm going to get better at this!

Hot Tamales

August 26, 09

I came back for lunch at my host family's to find Patty, live-in cook, maid/cousin, hauling a huge sack of potatos into the kitchen. Why? My host mom, Estella, said she would make 500 potato tamales for the local school for a snack. Let me tell you, this tamale-making is definitely an endeavor.

What was needed:

*500+ potatoes, boiled, peeled then made into mashed potatoes

*Few pounds of tomatoes, onions, butter, oil (probably something else, I forgot to ask), blended together to make the sauce

*1,000 banana leaves made into pairs of one large and one small leaf

*dried corn leaves to make the string the tie the tamales together

*500 hot peppers

*20+ lbs of meat

*mix the potatoes and sauce together in a huge tub

*scoop out a big spoonful of potato mix, place in the 2 banana leafs, add a pepper, add a piece of meat, fold banana leafs and tie.... then place into a huge pot

I had a few for lunch today and they were awesome. Probably the best tamales I've had since I've been here. They started at 1:30 pm and didn't end until 4:00 am.... crazy!

Vamos Xela!!

Experienced my first foreign soccer game, the Xelaju (che-la-who) soccer team of Quetzaltenango! It was pretty awesome. Our seats were kinda crappy but we were in the "cheering section". The game opened up with "Tigo" girls (dressed provocatively, of course) throwing our free prizes, all sorts of fireworks and then tons of chants. Thanks to our NY Times photographer and jounrnalists Kiki and Kati, we were able to score some pictures on the infield.... and became friends with the Western Highlands Tigo representative known formally as Juan Fransico "Pancho" Ramirez, now oficially by popular demand known as Don Juan. The "Don" drove us classy ladies around in his white volvo and for the 20 min. car ride, for a split second, we felt pretty cool. Thanks to Papa Don we will never have to pay for another Xelaju home soccer game and if we play our cards right.... maybe unlimited Tigo minutes.... but I'd settle for t-shirt. Ahh yeah.

GRATIS = attendance

So I gave a health presentation in front of 15 teachers, administrators, health professionals, etc. at my town muni. The meeting went well, teachers asked for my information so I could possibly start nutrition classes in their classrooms and I got word that they wanted me to give the same presentation the next day. Well.... not exactly. I show up with a health educator from my health center and one of my doctors and there are like 500 people here. They are having a food promotion with soy protein, pasta, atol, tomato sauce... and each food was represented by a company. Basically a local NGO put this promotion together and due to free food and a raffle the whole town showed up... well it felt like it to me. On top of that everyone in that room spoke Quiche, so there goes my health presentation. So between the cheesy in-between act fillers (teenage boys lipsynching and dancing terribly to mariachi-type singers decked out in tacky suits and large sombreros) I had to use the bathroom, of course. I had to use the public bathroom in the town market. Pretty much you are guaranteed to leave the bathroom with your pants soaked in pee and crap. Forget the smell. Needless to say that was awesome. I get back to find out the presentation started and my health educator was looking for me.... I felt bad, but it was either cross my legs in pain on stage or sacrafice the health of my feet (I was wearing sandals, go figure) and smelling like pee. Well, the presentation went well but when someone tells you to give the same presentation the next day it could either be 15 people or 500, you never know here.....