aracely.

Ugh, I was doing such a good job of keeping up with this blog before I got to site. In a way, I'm much busier than I was, but it's just different. Instead of being in Spanish class all day like we were in training, my schedule is now pretty random. In the last update, I wanted to talk about Friends of Poaquil, but it was so long already. So here it is now.

Friends of Poaquil is a scholarship fund here in San Jose Poaquil that a Peace Corps volunteer started about 10 or so years ago. PCVs in Poaquil have been in charge of it, and it was handed over to me when I moved here. Basically, kids from Poaquil and the aldeas are eligible to "apply." All of the kids are either basico students (like high school) or in their career school. It's not like the States where after high school you go to college, and then to nursing school, etc. Here, after basico, you apply for a career school, whether it be teaching, nursing, accounting or what have you. This year, we have 2 recipients graduating from basico and are remaining with F0fP for next year - one is going to accounting school, the other to study elementary education. There are 2 others graduating, but from their career schools - one from elementary education and the other from nursing. They have both been with the program since their basico education. Basically, the kids are fabulous; they have to maintain their grades, obviously, but they also have some community service type work that they do through the Puesto de Salud in one of the aldeas.

I went to one of the basico graduations last Friday, for Rogelia who is going to study accounting. This coming Saturday I'm going to the career school graduation for Anabeiba, who is going to be an elementary education teacher. I feel like being part of Friends of Poaquil has given me a wonderful and immediate "in" to the community here. There is a woman here from Saquitacaj, one of the aldeas of Poaquil, that is the Guatemalan side in charge of the program. Her name is Petrona, and she is one of the more impressive Guatemalans I've met in this country. I immensely admire her. We had a meeting a few weeks ago with the recipients and some of their parents, and when it was my turn to make a little speech, I definitely discovered that many colloquialisms from English don't translate to Spanish. I said that I have some very big shoes to fill, and the whole group of people just looked at me like I was crazy. So I had to stumble to explain that I meant the volunteers before had done such a great job that I have a lot to live up to. It was somewhat embarrassing, but unfortunately, none of them found it as funny as I did.

We spent Halloween in Guatemala City, which was SO much fun and absolutely nothing like the Guatemala I've been living in for the past 6 months. We had sushi for dinner, coffee at the mall (where I felt ridiculously under dressed and frumpy) and went to a huge party that easily could have been in the States, just that everyone spoke Spanish and English. Guatemala City is absolutely bizarre, but we had an awesome time. On Sunday morning, I stopped in Sumpango, a town about 30 minutes outside of Guate with my friend Ame. November 1 is obviously All Saints Day, and the tradition here is to fly kites as sort of an homage to ancestors. In Sumpango and another town nearby, they make these GIANT kites for a contest, and the ones under 10 meters are flown. The hugest ones are just decorations. The coolest part of the festival was all the ordinary people there flying their own small homemade kites. They were everywhere, mostly kids, but a fair amount of adults too. It was a beautiful day, and we just laid in the sun, on the grass, watching hundreds of people fly kites. Very surreal.

I've been fighting with my wireless internet ever since I bought it for this month last week. Any of you who don't like calling service lines or whatever, try it in a foreign language. I'm sure I hardly make any sense at all to the people, but it's up and running again, obviously, as I wouldn't be able to write this otherwise.

So Dad finally made it down here about a week and a half ago, and we had a wonderful time. We stopped by the lake, which is one of my favorite places in the country, and spent Sunday night in Antigua. I think my favorite part was having him come to Poaquil briefly on Sunday, which is market day, so it was nuts. I made him try atol de elote, sort of a mushy drink made from corn, which is incredibly popular here. He liked it, but not enough to have more than a taste!

Everyone from my training group is heading to Antigua this weekend because we're spending ALL of next week at the office, for Spanish class and other info sessions, that kind of jazz. Should be awesome to be all together again after about 4 months. I'm sure after that week, I'll have pretty much nothing cultural to write about; it will be a week of hanging out with Americans.

Ok, that's all I've got for now. You guys need to start looking into flights to come down here, I promise it's super cheap other than the flight! I LIVE on less than $350 a month, so spending some time is not going to hit your wallet too hard. The rainy season is pretty much over, and it's a bit cooler, and absolutely even more gorgeous, if that's even possible.

Mere