Thursday, June 18, 2009

xoyita.

Ahhhh, the after effects of our field based training. What an...interesting...8 days. In a nutshell, we left from Antigua on Saturday for San Antonio Ilotenango, Quiché. Wednesday morning we left San Antonio for San Martín Sacatepequez, Quetzaltenango. Returned to our training towns on Sunday.

We did everything from give charlas about lombrices (worms) to an HIV/AIDS workshop to cooking class with indigenous women and children to playing basketball in the muni with little kids to visit the "slaughterhouse" of the towns, etc. It was a really full and interesting week, but I feel like I kind of missed out on a lot of it because I felt horrible the second half of the week. Apparently, I have amoebas and a bacterial infection, and had NO energy. Fortunately, as of today, I´m feeling tons better. For being on 4 different antibiotics, I´d better be feeling better. I had to go to the hospital Friday night to figure out what was wrong with me, and I SO wanted to be in the States at one of the two rehearsal dinners that were happening that night. I have no idea if they´re reading this, but huge congrats to Richard/Gwendolyn and Amanda/Ben...I´m so sad I had to miss your weddings! The one upside of Saturday is that after we finished all our work of the week, we went to the Fuentes Georginas near Zunil, in Xela (same thing as Quetzaltenango). They were FANTASTIC. I have pictures somewhere on Facebook. I hadn´t ever been to hot springs before, so it was a major treat.

We´re (my town) giving an HIV/AIDS workshop here at some point in the next week or so, the details are still being hammered out. Current volunteers came in from their sites to help us out with the planning this past Mon/Tues/Wed which was incredibly helpful, and it´s also nice to get to know some volunteers outside our loony group of trainees.

I feel like this is a really boring update without my fav brand of dry humor, but I guess I had trouble finding sarcasm when I felt so crummy. This morning, we met our Spanish teacher, Rafael (Pastores, be jealous) and went to Jocotenango, a town just on the other side of Antigua. There is a "cultural center" there at this coffee finca called La Azotea, and we had a tour of the coffee-making process and some Mayan cultural education. Considering I didn´t drink coffee until 2 months ago, I didn´t know anything about it until this morning.

I´ve decided it will be hilariously ironic if I end up owning a horse in this country for transportation purposes (it´s really common) when I never was able to in the States because they´re so crazy expensive. However, that´s a long way off with lots of details to figure out, and quite possibly may never happen. Wooooo, I´m off for now. Time is starting to move FAST, and we find out where we´re going for the next 2 years in just over a week! Craziness. Keep the letters/packages/emails coming (the only ones NOT on my shit list are Mom/Dad, Rachael, and Lily W) as I´m really starting to miss celebrity gossip and idle chitchat from home.

Mere

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