Esmerelda.

¡Hola de San Miguel Dueñas!

If you read my email, then you´re pretty much in the loop. For the last week, I´ve basically been swamped with Spanish class and homework, and some tech training in there as well. Next week we start ¨helping¨the nurses in our towns´Puesto de Salud, or health center. There are 4 of us living here in Dueñas, and we´ll be working with Nurse Maria Elena, apparently.

I hear you can make this as hands-on as you want it to be. Our actual description is ¨health experts¨, which I find hilarious. That´s kind of a joke, but supposedly we´re here to educate voluntary health promoters here in Guate, so they aren´t reliant on outside help to make change. Basically, we´re just supposed to ask the right questions so that the members of the communities we´re working with come up with solutions on their own. If it´s not their idea, they usually don´t know how to use the technology that has been given to them.

This culture is so unbelievably conservative, it´s unreal. It is actually considered OFFENSIVE to wear sport sandals or flip-flops here outside the house. Shorts are never worn by women, and never outside the house by men. Skirts and dresses are always to at least the knee. Apparently, the shoe thing is tied into money. The old-school theory is that if you are poor, you either can´t afford shoes or just the bare minimum, so it is best to leave the house in shoes that show you are not poor. Guatemaltecos are so sweet and kind that they wouldn´t say anything to you, but it is considered extremely rude. Which is bizarre!

Day to day activities are the strangest part of living here. As I´ve said before, every house has a pila that collects water that is used for every purpose. Pilas are an open sink, with one or more small side flat basins that you use for washing. Some pilas are as small as our sinks in the States, and some are as large as a small swimming pool. Women use the side sinks to wash dishes, do laundry, etc. Let me be the first to tell you how unfun it is to handwash your clothes in the pila, scrubbing and beating them against the cement. I miss the washing machine and dryer. Appreciate them.

This town is small, but not anywhere near as small or as rural as the town I´ll be in starting in July, and we don´t have grocery store. There are lots of little tiendas, that sell everything from phone cards to underwear (in the same store), and EVERY window in the country is covered by bars. Even gum is kept under lock and key, so you have to ask for everything. On Sundays, the municipal market here is up and running, so there´s tiny Mayan women from all over the country selling papaya, live chickens, onions, guisquil, chocobananos, handwoven goods, etc.

The market is open in different days in different departments (similar to states in the US). Antigua has their municipal market open I think two days a week, and there´s a really famous huge market in Quetzaltenango that´s also open two days. Because I´m the epitome of a gringa, people try to sell me stuff for twice as much here. My family loved teaching me to say, ¡No! 5Q for a papaya. No hay 10Q!

Because I´m living with the daughter (who is only 24), of a family who is also hosting a volunteer in Dueñas, we´re always at that house, which is actually connected and right next door. The 4 dogs have the run of both houses. One of the dogs is hilarious - he reminds me a lot of Bonnie, for those of you who know who that is. This morning, Negro (the dog) and I went for a nice little walk around the town to stretch our legs and get more oriented. Essentially, every afternoon, there´s 4 little girls under the age of 10 at the big house that are so sweet. Andrea is 8, Jimena is 7, Leisa is 4, and Belen is 2. Andrea and Leisa are sisters (neices of my ¨mom), and Jimena and Belen are sisters (also neices of my mom). They are too precious.

Happy early Mother´s Day! Here we celebrate on the second Sunday of May, no matter the date. I went to a school play in honor of Día de Mamá this morning at Colegio Compostela in Antigua with my Spanish teacher. Her daughter is 7 and absolutely darling. Pretty hilarious, and Mom, I´m sorry you had to sit through all those plays at ROBS. Pretty excruciating I bet!

Because I have no idea what to title posts to this blog, I´m going to name them bus lines. The camionetas here, or ¨chicken buses¨as they´re known to Americans, are a scream. They are such incredibly garish colors, named sauve and promiscuous female Latin names. Perhaps my next update will be Princessita. And then Dorita. The seats are designed to fit ¨3¨people. 3 people, my ass. But we do it, ass to ass, also taking up the 6-8 inch aisle. All the while, there are people standing in the aisle and the ayudante squeezing his tush up and down collecting Quetzales. The bus drivers careen around the corneres of the roads at a rather frightening pace, with the ayudante hanging out the open front door and people packed into the bus like chickens. Fortunately I haven´t encountered any animals on the buses yet, but once I start going up into the highlands where I´ll be living for the next 2 years, I´m sure they´ll be there.

Everyone here is so friendly, and always greets each other ¨buenos días¨etc. Simply saying ¨hola¨is remarkably rude. It´s always buenas tardes, buenas noches. This morning, this tiny little Mayan woman in traditional dress with a canasta on her head almost bumped into me coming around a corner. I said to her, buenos días. Her response? Buenos días canche!, which means ¨Good morning pale blonde gringa.¨ According to my host mother, that is actually a good thing and kind of a compliment because it meant she wasn´t ignoring me. A group of elementary schoolers saw me in the street today and starting screeching, Gringa, Gringa! Of course no one else in my group in Dueñas has blonde hair.

I´m off to recommence burying myself in Spanish, but it´s been nice to say this much in English! I´ll just briefly mention that we have parades here for EVERY reason. I´ve seen 4 so far, and it´s been a week. Ok, that´s all for now. I´ll cover the crazy nighttime noises and comida tipical in my next update.

¡Qué le vaya bien!