Friday, July 24, 2009

poaquileña

Yes, I am alive! This is the first time I´ve been on a computer in over a week, but now that I´m here and settled, más o menos, I´ll hopefully be a little less out of touch. Everyone talks about how hard the first 3 months in site are, but I´m thinking that won´t be the case here. My first week went ridiculously well. Let me just mention right now that the precious tween in her traditional traje on the computer next to me is looking up pictures of Bon Jovi. Be still, my heart. Instead of a boring rundown, I´ll just hit some high points:

-Kaqchikel class. Absolute hilarity. Fortunately, we all stink at it so there´s no where to go but up. Our teacher, Israel, is rather patient. I´m also going to be giving an English class in our Centro de Salud every Thursday afternoon, but yesterday we didn´t get back from the nacimientos in time.

-Día de las comadronas. In other words, midwife day at an ONG here, Ixin Ac'uala'. Ixin Ac'uala' is a local branch of the Christian Children´s Fund...hmmm. The comadronas spent half the morning preparing an enormous pot of caldo, soup with veggies and an unidentified meat, and then did a little dance and some speeches. All in Kaqchikel, I understood almost nothing. I got to call off the raffle, which was a scream.

-Disinfecting the nacimientos of one of Poaquil´s aldeas, Hacienda María. We schlepped across the side of a mountain and down into the valley to the water source and scrubbed down the cajas and put a 60% concentration (!) of cloro in the main caja to kill whatever crap is in there. Apparently, this is done 2 times per year. There´s about 30 aldeas of Poaquil, and who knows how many nacimientos each one has. So that means this happens a lot, I guess. We went to two others, also for Hcda María, which was back up the side of the mountain and down into another valley. My new Converse kicks were not a good choice of footwear for this caminata.

-I´m going to skip over the week before this one because all it was were a ton of meetings and sessions, followed by swear-in at the ambassador´s house in Guatemala City on Friday. We all spent the weekend in Antigua, which was fantabulous. AND SAW HARRY POTTER! It was amazing.

All the doorways in this country are covered by curtains, cortinas, and they are sooooo necessary. There are these enormous flying ants here called sompopos, and they land on the cortinas (better than in my bedroom). I felt like I was in Super MarioWorld the other day, in Bowser´s Castle, knocking sompopos off the cortina from the opposite side instead of turtles across the net.

Peace Corps would be very pleased to know that my danger radar is fairly sensitive these days. I was on the camioneta, heading to Antigua last week, when 2 FULLY dressed and painted clowns boarded the bus. My first thought is, ¨well, glad I´m not carrying much money, because we´re all about to be held up.¨ Fortunately, that wasn´t the case and I was just a smidge paranoid. But, let´s face it, clowns are scary as hell.

I´m going to wrap this up by informing all of you I purchased my machete today. Such a proud moment for my parents, I´m sure. But you do really need them here...everyone carries them without a sheath or a scabbard, which is weird. The men just tuck the handle into their belt and it swings along with them. I hope everyone is doing well, and I´ll be back with more soon.

Nos vemos.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

serenita

Things I´ve Learned Thus Far in Guatemala:

-Jeans are appropriate for 99% of occassions. Possibly more.
-It is perfectly acceptable to have a cell phone but not wear shoes.
-Laundry day is typically determined by the weather.
-Refracciones are a must if you want people to show up to something.
-Hora chapina. It kills you and your planning. ALWAYS have a book or something.
-Jobs/schools shut down during fería.
-This is a country of cultures colliding. You will see men in traje spraying crops with pesticides and little girls wearing corte (traje skirt) with a Hannah Montana t-shirt.
-The world does not stop if you are sick.
-For a country that exports excellent coffee, it can be crazy difficult to find good coffee to drink.
-Guatemalans are extremely creative about carrying all their crap.
-There is no such thing as salad dressing - lime juice and salt.
-Quesadilla is not what you would expect. It´s essentially a super sweet cornbread here.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

brisas.

Well, we´re all about to hit the ground running. Today is the first day I´ve had a couple minutes to make it to a computer in quite some time, and I´m about to get MUCH busier. Today was the day...dum dum dum...we found out where we´re going!

I´m going to have to eat my words from my last post, first and foremost, because I said I wouldn´t take anyone to visit Chimaltenango. When I said that, I meant the cabecera (departmental capital, kind of like Austin is to Texas), not the department in general. But I´m eating my words because in just a few short weeks I´m going to live in Chimal...ideally with this pet raccoon I plan on getting. Specifically, San José Poaquil. It´s in the northern part of the department, not at all too far from Lago de Atlitlan. Two of my pals from training (Ryan and Stacy) are going to be pretty darn close to me also. Ahhhh, and there´s Mayan ruins within an hour of me! The town is 95% indigenous and speaks a fair bit of Spanish, but I´m excited about learning some Kakchiquel.

I´m going to go visit next week, so I´ll know a heck of a lot more after that. Finally, that huge weight is off our shoulders (also because our VIH/SIDA taller was today, but it was remarkably unmemorable...perhaps because only one person showed up and we had to modify). Anyways, the rest of my time before swearing in is going to go by lickity-split.

This past Friday, the Pastores kids and us from Dueñas went for a little caminata up through Antigua to this really cool cross that overlooks the whole city. Of course we ran into other tourists, but these gringos were super special in the fact that a slew of them were from Houston and were in Guatemala with the organization Living Water. Which I plan on finding out more about. On Saturday, our Dueñas crowd (including families...like 26 people) and two other trainees, Anna and Courtenay, fled Sacatepequez for the beach. Las Lisas is practically in El Salvador along the Pacific coast, and was quite relaxing. A bunch of my host family´s family lives there, so we stayed with them. I personally can´t imagine Mom/Dad or any other middle-aged parent I know bunking down on the concrete floor with everyone. But that´s what all the Guatemalans did! Well, other than those of us who slept in hammocks, my fortunate self included. This is where I got the idea for my future pet raccoon...the Las Lisas relatives had one named Jackie (I hope the irony isn´t lost on you all...it certainly wasn´t on me).

The schools finally went back today, after 2 1/2 weeks off, supposedly for AH1N1, which I prefer to refer to as gripe porcina. Anyways, we were all on pins and needles all morning waiting to find out. In short, out of my preventive health training group, 3 of us are going to Chimaltenango, 2 to Huehuetenango, 2 to San Marcos, and 8 to Totonicopan. Wooooh! A ton has happened recently, but I just wanted to hit the high points and pretend like I´m not forgetting to update this thing when I can.

Please keep the letters and emails coming, I love them! Ooooh, but for packages, try a box instead of an envelope, don´t send anything valuable (please), and try to put religious symbols on the outside (seriously, it´s supposed to work). Books and magazines are excellent items. I should have some time this weekend, well, when we´re not celebrating the 4th of July, so I´ll see if I can´t get some more info up then.

¡Nos vemos!
Marta