Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Yeehaw

Whoa, two posts in less than 24 hours?? Well, I bought the fast speed internet for the day for some other needs I had and wanted to take advantage by uploading a video I had earlier tried to upload but couldn't due to the sluggishness of my internet speed. So, here is a video I took of the rodeo I went to during the feria in my town that I talked about in an earlier post. Enjoy :)



Monday, June 20, 2011

Loud rain.

I think I will start this post with some random accounts of things that have happened to me in the past few days. 


1. The other night I went to go pee before bed. I turned on the light, sat down, peed, and as I got up and turned to flush I see a giant cockroach (because small cockroaches don't exist in Guatemala) in the bowl very close to wear my butt was. Naturally, I jumped and freaked because I really dislike bugs and it was so close to my bum that the thought of it having the opportunity to crawl up my backside is very frightening to me. I flushed. Sorry cockroach. 


2. I have a mosquito net over my bed. It allows me to sleep peacefully in my bed without being eaten alive by mosquitoes and also prevents me from waking up with a spider on my head (close encounter already experienced). Well, that's what I thought at least until tonight when I got in my bed, tucked the net in around my bed, prepared to update my blog, and what do I find to my surprise? A mosquito in my net. Fail on the net. How did that happen? Saber, but I got it out and my net is working to its potential again.


So anyways, the rainy season has slowly crept in. Right now, it's not so bad. During the day it doesn't really rain, sometimes it's sunny sometimes it's cloudy but it's still a nice, warm temperature. Then in the late afternoon or later at night, it POURS. The torrential downpours here are intensely insane. I don't know if I have ever experienced anything like it. Also, I have a roof made solely of aluminum sheets. Here are the two lovely consequences of such: 1. When it is gorgeous and sunny outside my roof acts as an oven and heats my house up like no other. 2. When it downpours, it sounds so incredibly loud on my roof. No matter how loud I turn up my iTunes I can't hear a thing while my computer is on my lap. Headphones it is. But ya know what? In the end, I don't even really mind. I have my own lovely little space that is all my own so I can compromise.  


With the start of the rainy season also comes other things; some good, some not so good. Let's start with the good. There is water all the time! Hooray! I remember when I first got to site, I only had water early in the morning until about 8 am and then not until after about 5 pm. Now I have water all of the time and don't have to plan what time I can shower or wash dishes. The not so good part about the start of the rainy season? Because of all the new copious amounts of water coming through a lot of contamination that was sitting in rivers and immobile for awhile gets pushed through for the first time in months. What does that mean? Well, for one, it means that a lot of times when you turn the water on to fill the pila (stone sink thing every house in Guatemala has) the water is murky and brown. Yeah, sound gross? It kinda is. And there is no running it to see if it clears up because that is all there is. What can you do? Not drink it that's for sure. The other problem with all this newly moving water is that it leads to a lot of diarrhea in communities. Since the water is contaminated it is easy to somehow get it in your mouth and, hence, get sick. Fortunately, I hear this only lasts for the beginning of the rainy season so I guess we will see how long that just means.


Lastly, I want to mention how work is going. Work is going really well, I'm happy to say. Schools have surprisingly, and to my pleasure, been in session and I've been doing my visits. Today in particular I had a great visit. I went to one of my best schools, meaning the teachers are really motivated and the community is really supportive. I did my baseline survey to get an understanding of where the school currently stands. They don't have any water and right now collect rainwater to use for the school. Then I did a small workshop with the teachers training them on specifics of the program. Then I had the wonderful opportunity to meet with a good amount of the mothers of the students. The director of the school had scheduled a meeting with them to discuss some points she needed to address and to present me. It went well and they seemed really receptive of me. I'm excited because from what the director tells me, the women in the community, specifically these mothers, are very active in the community and like to work on projects and learn new things. One of my hopes is to work with a women's group here and I think these are just my ladies. I brought the idea up to them and that I would really love to work with them on projects, talks, activities, etc. every month and they were interested. My plan is to do my first activity with them next month on dental hygiene. I'm so excited! I will keep you all posted on how that goes. Side note on my trip to that school today. I got a ride with a teacher to and from the school today, which was nice or else it would have been a two hour walk. Well as we were going to the school I notice a dog running alongside us. Turns out, it was the teacher's dog that had gotten loose right before he left. The ride took about 20 minutes but as I said before it would have been two hours walking. That dog ran all the way to the school with us. He then proceeded to come into his classroom and lay down beside where he was teaching all day. Then, he ran back home along our side again. What a loyal pet! Not to mention that he has some great endurance. I thought it was really cute and funny. 


Anyways, so you can see that things are going pretty well right now and happily so. It's funny how in Guatemala you can have one really great week and then somehow get hit low the next week. But that's how things are here. I miss the beach at home yet there are still waves in my life in this aspect. Just gotta ride em out. I leave you with a quote from a book I once read called "Geography of Bliss" by Eric Weiner. "Periods of good fortune naturally alternate with periods of adversity, just as sunny days are interspersed with rainy ones." Mmm, ain't that the truth. 
 

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Long days, short weeks

Well a lot has happened since my last post but at the same time not much has happened at all. Let me explain. To begin, I have MOVED! This is h u g e news. Remember that flea episode I had during my last post? Well...a week later I went to Antigua and got bed bugs. Then a week after that I borrowed a blanket from my host family (mistake) and got fleas again. Let's just say, I kinda lost it. I was frustrated, upset, SO itchy and broke from spending so much money on sprays and laundry. I was so stressed out even my body felt out of whack. I was miserable and couldn't stand living in that house anymore - it was making me so genuinely unhappy. Well, the Universe works in wonderful ways and and one of the following days I was walking through my town and noticed (for the first time ever in Guatemala) some flyers on the windows of a house that said "House for Rent" and a phone number. You're probably thinking, "I thought you had that other house being constructed for you?" Well, yeah, I did. But Guatemalan construction isn't like US construction and when they say it will be ready in 4 weeks they mean 8. At the point I was at with everything, I couldn't wait anymore for a house that would most likely take another month to be built. So long story short, I went to look at the house, really liked it, got it inspected/approved by Peace Corps, and I moved! It is incredible how much happier and relaxed I feel since moving. Life is better and I feel sane again. Not to mention a whole lot cleaner now that I have total control over my living space. Well, almost. Right now I am sharing a bathroom with the family next door I am renting from because they are going to construct me my own bathroom. But for now everything has been working out really great and once I am done settling in and decorating I will post pictures of my new home!

So aside from the crazy mayhem of moving and all that, I haven't worked in the past two weeks with schools. First week because of planning I had to do and then teachers' meetings causing the teachers to be absent from schools. The second week (last week) was our feria, or fair, in town. This happens every year for one whole week and is a pretty big deal. Obviously, school is not in session during this time. (I say obviously because Guatemalans cancel school for everything.) It worked out well though because it gave me time to move and I also got to attend some different activities. For instance, I went to my very first rodeo on Sunday. Man, cowboys are crazy. Apparently the rodeo that came here is some internationally acclaimed group (or so they said). The cowboys were from a couple of countries, not just Guatemala. It is scary watching them ride those bulls and then get thrown off them with the fury of the bull. You can feel the tension of the crowd as everyone watches to see if the bull will hurt him or if he will just escape to safety. A few of them got tossed and charged at pretty hard but no one was seriously injured, thank God. I really don't know how they ride those bulls without throwing out their backs or just falling off instantly, but I guess that is their job and they do it all the time. Crazy. 

I also had the opportunity to help out a fellow volunteer during that off week, a friend and eco-tourism volunteer named Winfrey. He works with an alliance that does eco-tours at a bunch of different sites in the area. During that week, INGUAT, the national tourism organization in Guat, was visiting 17 sites in total to take videos of the sites as a promotion for community tourism in Guatemala. They are combining all 17 sites into one video and making 2,000 copies, which they are then sending out to countries all over the world. So of those 17 sites, two were close by to where I live and they needed volunteer "tourists" for the videos to go on the tours with them. Pretty much I got to go to two really cool places for free and have them count as "work days" because I was helping a fellow volunteer. First I went to the Salto de Chilascó, which is the highest waterfall in Central America. It was absolutely amazing and beautiful. The hike wasn't even too bad either and we got to swim a little in another waterfall that was smaller. Then we went to Chicoj, where Winfrey lives at a coffee coop, and got to go on a coffee tour of his site. This included getting to zipline, which I love and had so much fun doing. I really got to see some natural beauty and culture of Guatemala and that's what I'm here to do right? Well, part of it at least. 

Now this week schools are finallyyy back in session and I have started working again (yay!) and getting busy with work again. Peace Corps has this motto (in Guatemala at least) that there are long days and short months in Peace Corps. Well, that is certainly true but to be even more specific I think it is more like long days and short weeks. It's crazy how long a day in Guatemala can feel sometimes. You can spend all day doing nothing or all day being really busy but no matter what it always feel like the day is never-ending and like you woke up yesterday as opposed to this morning. But then, before you know it, the week is over! It can be Thursday but it feels like Monday was yesterday. I can't really explain it but that's just the way life is here, or more so, feels here. I can't say I mind it. Time is a strange, strange thing.