My Big, FAT, Guatemalan Vacation

So I don’t know what I have been up to…but apparently it’s not writing blog entries. For this I apologize.

Time flies when you’re…speaking Spanish?

So I’ve been in Guatemala for 11 months, and 8 of those 11 I’ve been up north, in-site.
For those of you who haven’t done the math I’ll lay it out for you-
We sign up for 27 months of service
- I’ve been here 11 months
______________________
So I’ve got 16 months left…more or less.

Here’s what I have to show for it…

My schools know who I am.
I can pretty much speak Spanish.
I have discovered a love for cooking
I am the walrus coo-coo-ka-choo (?)

Actually… I’m going to stop doing this…because it’s hard to count up successes like that. I mean how to do you quantify building trust with tienda ladies or the ability to navigate the public transportation system? It’s difficult to classify. Suffice it to say that I’m figuring stuff out and sloooowwwwly (hopefully) creating some change in regards to how my schools prioritize the health and health education of their students.

Yes.

In other news… it’s vacation for the schools, which means that as a healthy schools volunteer, all of my structured work has disappeared and has left me with a lot of time to…look for other things to do. The majority of this time I have spent preparing workshops for my teachers for the following school year, and looking for a new place to live (maybe somewhere off the main drag…so people can’t bother me so easily). Workshops are coming along and the housing front has produced a few leads (but nothing I have deemed, “suitable” in regards to safety and privacy. Alas, the search continues).

In the rest of my time I have been traveling and attending training activities and in these pursuits I have learned something very, very important: everything is better at the beach.

I feel better about my life at the beach. My hair is better, my skin is better, my attitude is better, my ideas are better, even my Spanish is better- it‘s all just better; site-change please. Dear Peace Corps, send me on down to the coast if you want to see me really thrive. Sincerely, Kristin.

the "backyard" of our house.

I just returned from one of the most relaxing weeks of my life. I went down to Monterrico (on the Pacific coast) with a group of people to celebrate Thanksgiving and it was Heaven. During the week when there was no one there, it was peaceful and hot and lazy. I rotated my time between wading in the ocean, futile attempts at body surfing, swimming in the pool, laying in hammocks, reading, napping, cooking and walking along the beach; somewhere in there I even took a tour of a mangrove and held a baby turtle.
The ocean was incredible and something about it kind of brought me back to life. I had been a little bit disenchanted with my site and my service after I got that note through my window and had to start examining every move I made through an, “am I safe doing this/is someone watching me” lens. I was starting to feel a little bit blue, but after I came back from the beach even my site-mate said I was, “like, glowing or something.” ha ha.

bliss.

mangrove tour: me, andrea, mari, laura and alicia- gang's all here!

cooing at a baby turtle

 My post-beach glow has since started to fade a little, which may have something to do with the fact that I fell and hurt myself immediately upon my return into site (story to follow)…but luckily I am off to Costa Rica with the family in a week; so I think I can make it.

Tough life. I know.

So, this blog entry has taken a long time to write. Why? Because I have typed it using only my left hand and my right pinky finger. I know, I’m amazing. No big deal. I’m also extraordinarily clumsy; which is how I have rendered three of my fingers on my right hand unusable (at least for another week, the index finger seems to be making a comeback faster than the others).

So, I was in Antigua for IST (In-Service-Training) following my vacation at the beach (*Kristin drifts away into fantasy beach vacation….* sigh.)
I had been away for 2 weeks at the end of IST and was eager (well…'figured it was time,' is a more accurate description) to get back to site. So I wake up on Friday morning, pick up some breakfast and get on a bus at around 8:30AM. I get off in Chimal (a major intersection in the department of Chimaltenango) to wait for a bus to take me to Huehue and after about an hour or so one passes and I get on. As I step up onto the bus I am surprised and excited to see that a fellow PCV, Mari, is also on the bus and she’s got an open seat for me. Awesome.

Well, as I sit down Mari tells me that the man who is sitting directly behind us has just thrown up…mostly in a bag, but also on his pants and shirt. Yum.

I don’t notice the smell for a while until we’re in a rest-stop and the man gets up to…well I don’t know what he did but it definitely wasn’t, (a) to wash his hands or (b) to clean himself up a little. That’s when we got a real whiff of sick and decided that as people got off the bus at their varying destinations and seats opened up in front of us that we would try and put as much distance in-between barf-guy and ourselves. So we moved up a row; little did we know that when barf-guy got back on the bus that he would elect to sit (not where he had been sitting before…where he had already soiled the seat with his vomit, but instead,) where we had been previously sitting and was once again, directly behind us. “Oh well,” we thought, “maybe it’s good that he is by the open window” (as the window in our new seat did not open); just as the bus starts to take off again, he shuts the window and there we are, stuck in stagnant air with a smelly, sick man- would have classify this as actually a step down from before.

So this happens a few times- we move further forward, he moves further forward etc. Finally we make it to Huehue and decide that we deserve a treat and head immediately to McDonalds aka mini-America.
Mari and I say our goodbyes and get on our respective busses to make the final leg of the trip back to our sites. About 20 minutes into our rides we both end up texting the other to relay that the last leg of the journey is about on-par with the first as she is sitting next to a chatty drunk guy and I am boxed in by a nun who has fallen asleep on me and is unresponsive to my subtle, “wake up, you’re drooling on me” shrugs.
3.5 hours later I’m nearing my stop and I’m antsy. It’s 8:45 PM…which means I’ve been traveling for about 12 hours and 15 minutes; my butt and my back hurt from being on busses all day and I am so, so glad to be done with my travels. I make my way towards the front of the bus and tell the driver where to let me off, the bus comes to a stop and as I’m walking down the steps of the bus I take a tumble.

In all seriousness I am not sure how I managed to hurt myself, but this is what happened. I stepped down from the bus with my right foot, with my right hand still on the rail. Since it was dark out I did not notice that the bus had in fact, stopped directly on a speed bump. So I stepped down, onto uneven pavement, rolled my right ankle inward and tumbled to the left while my right hand grabbed at the bus for support and instead got sliced by some sharp metal near the door.

Now, as I’m sure you can imagine, this caused a little commotion and was highly embarrassing. The Ayudante helped to pick me up and tons of people were telling me to be careful (thanks) and did I hurt? Well, yes, my ankle and my right hip that caught my fall did hurt a little, but the real pain was coming from my right hand (which I thought would have been the safest part of my body, since it was so far from the accident); I looked down and saw little red crescents on the tips of my index, middle, and ring fingers, which moments later would start bleeding profusely.

So here I am, I’ve got my big backpack, my little backpack, and one other bag. I’m about a half a block to my house, so I start walking. Once I get to the door I realize I am unable to open it with my injured hand. Luckily my roommate was home and came to my aid, opening the door for me and helping me shed my belongings in the foyer. By this point there is blood dripping down my forearm and onto the floor via my elbow and while I’m not crying, I am a little bit concerned.

After getting the bleeding under control Maria calls her sister who is a nurse and I call Peace Corps to see where I can go to get my fingers looked at. Maria’s sister comes over to take a look to assess how bad my injury is and Peace Corps asks me, “how far are you from Xela?”
“yeah…no, xela is about 6 hours from here; I just got home, is there any way I can go to the hospital here?”
“No, unfortunately we do not have a PC approved hospital up there; I know that it's annoying but it really is for your benefit that you go in to Xela.”

So Maria’s sister patched me up good enough for the night and I woke up the next morning to get back on a bus to go to the 6 hours to the Hospital in Xela. Naturally I had texted Mari the night before to keep her abreast of the worst part of my trip home and she offered to accompany me to the Hospital; which I accepted. Mari- thank you very much, you’re a real pal. To Xela we went; first stop was the Hospital where I (embarrassed) showed them my filthy hand and told and re-told how it happened to every person who came in the room (there were like 5 different doctors/nurses/residents tending to me…must’ve been a slow day). In the end I got 3 stitches in the tip of my ring finger, which was by far the worst and they gauze-bandaged my other digits and sent me on my merry way.

So it wasn’t that bad but, fun fact- fingers (much like one’s head, which I found out years ago in a hammer-falling-off-ladder accident) bleed a lot from the smallest of cuts. There are also a lot of nerves in there…which made them putting the needle in my finger to numb it for stitches extremely painful and I do not recommend it to anyone.

my fingers a couple days healed

After the hospital we macked on some Indian food with Claire and got to traveling back. There are no words. My head hit the pillow and I slept like a dead person, sans dreams, sans movement.

The next morning I woke up, got on another bus and finally arrived back in site. I exited the bus and walked to my house with extra attention to every step, knowing that the nearest hospital is 6 hours away…and never wanting to make that trip again.

So that’s what I’ve been up to; next on the agenda is Costa Rica and I can’t wait to see Dad, Kathleen, Rob, Dave & Jason!

To my friends & family- I miss you dearly and wish you a very merry holiday! Take good care of each other!

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!

these are the days of our lives...

"These are the days of our lives"

I don't take enough pictures.

well...i decided to take some time out of my busy schedule of cooking and watching "17 again" to bring you some pictures of food and a little story about something that happened this weekend.

Disclaimer: I’m fine. Don’t worry. I can almost laugh about it. Probably definitely laugh about it by tomorrow…

So I’m sitting in my room in my jams, minding my own business on Saturday night when i hear a noise at my window. I go to check it out...there's a car idling outside and as soon as i open my curtains it speeds off. weird but not completely out of the ordinary. so i go back to sitting at my desk (I’m watching episodes of how i met your mother on my computer and sewing my Halloween costume) and i hear another noise outside my window...so i go check it out. nothing that i can see. i mean...it is midnight and the streets are pretty quiet so it very well could have been a dog or something.

then a half-an-hour later i hear another noise and this time i am 100% sure that it was not an animal and not in my imagination because there is a little sealed note laying on my floor by the window.
this is concerning to me on several levels but I’ll just start with the most concerning- 1.) my window is about 6' off the ground (which is entirely too high for most people to reach into, we're in a mostly indigenous site, damian and i are GIANTS here). 2.) In addition to there being bars outside of my window (so that no one can break in) there is also mosquitero (screen material) that i have duct-taped around my window to make a screen. there is a small area at the bottom corner where the screen has started to roll up because the duct-tape has worn out but bugs are not swarming in through it nor would it be easy to toss something through...especially with the bars…so, more likely, a person would have to be directly outside of my window to reach in under & past the screen to drop me a note. 3) it's 12:30 am and 4) my curtains were cracked just a touch to let a breeze in and i have no idea how long a person could have been there watching me.

so i hear the noise and look over to see a note laying on my floor.
I stare at it for a while trying to rationalize all of the ways that something like that could be on my floor. maybe it was a tag of some sort that fell off of my curtain when the breeze came through...and maybe that's what the sound was?
well, i get up and walk out of my room because i'm starting to freak out and i need to regain my cool. I grab a glass of water and come back into my room, walk to the window, close and lock it and then draw my blinds completely shut and seal them that way with a claw hairclip before picking up the mysterious package.

the first and most distinct quality is that it has been entirely covered in cologne- we’re talking serious, junior-high schooler’s amount of cologne, i have it now in a ziplock bag by my door just because it is so strong. second thing i notice is that it is in fact a little package, crudely taped together with pieces of masking-tape and there is something inside it. I know before i open it that it is unmistakably a condom inside the package. I start to hyperventilate because there is no way that i can rationalize that what I was holding was a tag that could have fallen off of my curtain. I rip it open and sure enough- a condom (strawberry flavored if you're curious) and a note that says, "quieres compania esta noche? (do you want company tonight?) Call me" and a phone number.

so...in case there was any way for me to try and trick myself into believing that this package was mistakenly delivered to my window it was gone due to the fact that they wrote "call me" in English. rude.
so... i don’t know what to do. my first impulse is to throw up because i am so creeped out all of a sudden and second is to call someone. i start walking around in circles in my room to decide what i should do because my roommate is asleep and i don’t want to wake her but i have to talk to someone right now, i need to tell someone what happened so i can calm down. damian was out of town but I decided that i should call him anyways because he knows my house and our community and he'll probably tell me I’m overreacting and that it was probably just some kids messing around with me, I’ll agree, feel embarrassed but ultimately calmer and I’ll be able to go to bed.
as soon as damian picks up the phone and i try to tell him what had happened i started sobbing and asked him to please come back to site because i was really creeped out and i didn’t know what to do. (I’m such a pansy… I’m going to man-up from now on…well…I’m going to try).
The rest of the conversation went pretty much as i predicted. it ended with me agreeing that it was probably just some kids messing around, that there was no way that they could get into the house and that i should just go to bed and not let it get to me.

like i said, pretty much what i predicted. although...admittedly i was still scared despite damian's solid reasoning that there was no way anyone could get into the house so i cried and walked around my room in circles for a while longer until i was ready to go to bed.

The next morning I woke up and told my roommate about it and she told me that she was out sweeping the sidewalk in front of our house that morning and she noticed that there were cinder blocks stacked up outside of my window and she thought it was odd so she moved them. So…now I know that I’m not looking for like the one guy in town that’s tall enough to reach the window…since they were standing on cinder blocks they could be considerably shorter, that‘s like…98% of the people here. Neat.
So I’ve been pretty indiscriminately glaring at every male that greets or even looks at me on the street for the last few days… I should probably stop doing that….it’s not very friendly.

I am in much better spirits now...and I do think that it was probably some kids just messing around...looking up how to say "call me" in English etc. but if anything like that happens again I’m going to freak out...I think we can all agree that people peeking in and watching someone through a tiny crack in their curtains is cause for some discomfort.
　
I am going to try and keep my window locked and my curtains closed but it does get really hot here and I’m not about to let some little creeper juvenile delinquent with a Spanish-English dictionary take away my cool evening breezes…should they try again, there will be hell to pay.

And now…to the pictures.

So I went to the market with the intention of making some salsa to put in with my makeshift yumm bowls (I’m out of the sauce…but I’m experimenting to make a substitute…) anyways, Jalapenos were on the list. So I went to one of the vendors and asked how much their jalapenos were- 4Q a pound he says. I pick up 4 of them (a pound would be way to much for my needs) and ask him how much for only 4. 1Q each he tells me.

So I bought a pound. It was pay 4Q for 4 of them…or pay 4Q for about 25 of them. i mean, I couldn’t NOT buy a pound... my hand was forced.

It was clear as day what I had to do- I had to make some jalapeno poppers…and they were really tasty. However- should you plan to make some yourself…do wear gloves. Not wearing gloves was a HUGE mistake. I scratched my nose like 6 hours and multiple hand washes after making them and I had to soak my nose in a glass of milk until it stopped feeling like it was going to burn off my face. It was bad news.

Here’s the pics of the process.

take some jalapenos, cut off the tops, core them out, de-seed...

　

cheese mix- i did cream cheese, mozerella, a little bit of minced garlic and some cilantro...

fill the jalapenos with the cheese & put the tops back on

batter and bread them...put them in the fridge for 30 minutes.

fry and enjoy.

After I made the poppers I was not finished…I decided I should use some of the rest of the jalapenos to make some chili.
So I did…and was really…really good.

i've decided that chili never looks as good as it tastes...

a bowl of chili and some pita bread: check.

Kristin, is that a chili-dog-burger? yes, yes it is: check.

I also made some peanut butter cookies…just to take the edge off. They were okay I guess…I don’t know who ate them all but all of a sudden they were ALL GONE. It was so weird.

mmm...

　
And that’s all I have for you guys. Until next time…
Peace & Love,
Kristin　　　

Bug-a-Boo

Bug-a-Boo.

That is the kind of persistence that will win you a radio contest…

Unfortunately that skill-set is not appreciated by me. Sorry.

And now- an excerpt from the song of this entry’s namesake: you’re welcome.

You make me wanna throw my pager out the window
Tell MCI to cut the phone poles
Break my lease so I can move
'Cause you a bug a boo, a bug a boo
I wanna put your number on the call block
Have AOL make my e-mails stop
'Cause you a bug a boo
You buggin what? You buggin who? You buggin me!
And don't you see it ain't cool

It's not hot that you be callin' me
Stressin' me, pagin' my beeper
You just don't stop
And it's not hot
That you be leavin' me messages
Every 10 minutes and then you stop by
When I first met you, you were cool
But it was game, you had me fooled
'Cause 20 minutes after I gave you my number
You already had my mailbox full

…thank you Destiny’s Child for giving me something to hold onto in these trying times…

I get so excited when i make new friends; i feel like i'm more integrated and like i'm finally figuring stuff out; like people are starting to see me less as the gringo who is passing through and start to respect me as a person with whom they live and work.
So… I made a friend and i thought it was good thing until i realized that this was not a new "friend" but that this was actually a new "suitor." this was made obvious by the frequent calls and texts, we're talking multiple times a day (we’re talking anywhere between 5-15 times a day). So i was forced (perhaps prematurely…perhaps not) to terminate the friendship before it got any more “serious.”
I somewhat dislike confrontation and I had to do it twice. The first time I told him that he was calling me too much and it was making me uncomfortable and to please stop. A week passed and I thought my problem was gone, but alas, it began again. The second time I told him that he was very nice but I would prefer if he did not call or text me anymore because it was really bothering me. It has been 1 week since I did that…as of today…so hopefully we will not see a repeat performance.
Since said confrontation I have been rather…awkward walking around town (moreso than usual), afraid that I may run into him. I get really flustered when I am trying to tell someone to stop…especially in Spanish. I had also never had to do that before…I mean in the states people generally understand that if I’m ignoring you that it = not interested, leave me alone. Here it appears, it’s a little bit different.

Persistence is apparently the key. Someone HAS TO be reinforcing this behavior. That’s the only explanation I can think of.

I even asked my roommate, a Guatemalan woman, what I should do about all of the calls that I was getting. I said, “he’s really friendly but he is calling me A LOT and I don’t want him to get the wrong idea, I also do not want to answer my phone 10 times a day just to talk about how I am doing and come up with excuses as to why I can’t go out for coffee with him.” (I know what you guys are thinking, “Kristin, come on, it’s coffee, don’t be so cold,” well,  if you feel that way, YOU go out to coffee with him.) so my roommate says, “oh yeah, well… just answer the phone when you want to talk to him.” so…what if I never want to talk to him? Yikes.

It is my fault. I openly acknowledge this. I gave him my phone number- but I feel like I was kind of tricked (also…as we’ve discussed, I have a hard time saying, “no.”) What happened was he had just seen me at his aunt’s tienda and I left without talking to him (because i have a tendancy to be antisocial with strangers who aren't women in tiendas…don't worry about it). So he got in his car and decided to drive towards my house (because everyone and their mom knows where I live) and he comes alongside me and idles while I walk and try and ignore how awkward it is. Then I’m right outside of my house about to cross the street and he is like, “you’re Kristin, right?” and I’m thinking…crap, I was SO CLOSE to getting home! “yes, that’s me, nice to meet you” and he introduced himself as Maria (tienda lady’s) nephew. So I decided to be nice…because I love tienda maria and don’t want it to get back to her that I’m rude to people.

Conversation progresses, he invites me for coffee, I say no, that I have stuff to do; he insists, I insist, “no” (so far so good). Then he asks me if I go to Hue hue a lot, I say that I do, about 1-2 times a month and he continues to tell me he’s got a house in hue hue right next to taco mansion (every peace corps volunteer is familiar with that place, it’s delightful) and he tells me that no one is living there and that if I would like I can stay there with my friends when I go into town instead of staying in a hotel, that he would just make me a copy of the key.
Now…in the states this might be weird but I swear to you it’s pretty normal here- people are super friendly and they all feel kind of sorry for us for being all alone. So I decide that…well, I don’t really need a place to stay because I’ve got a friend who lives in hue hue already and I can stay with her; so then he changes his tactic and says that he may be going to hue hue soon and that he could call me the next time he goes to see if I’m going there and need a ride. Well…he got me there, travel by car is much preferable to a 4 hour bus trip. So I gave him my number and said, “sure, the next time you go to hue hue if you would let me know that would be great.” after he got my number he asked if he could stop by and knock on my door and say hi to me sometime. I said, “no, I’d prefer you didn’t, please call first because sometimes I am busy or bathing or something and don’t want to see anyone,” he decides that’s acceptable, tries to get me to go and get coffee with him one more time and then let me go into my house. little did i know it was only the beginning of something that would be essentially really awkward and annoying.
One example, nothing more:
I talked to him on the phone earlier in the afternoon, told him that I was sorry that I would not be able to get coffee with him because I was busy for the rest of the day, that I wanted to exercise, shower and that I had a skype date with my dad at 8. He says, “cool, well have a great workout, have a great shower, and have a great chat with your dad, rest well” (literally what was said). so I figured this is the last I am going to hear from him that day right? Wrong. I am exercising and my phone is ringing off the hook so I go over to see who could possibly be calling me 5x in a row (from previous experience when calls happen like that it is usually an indication that something bad has happened, I thought for sure it was my dad, my step mom or peace corps and it worried me). Well, no, no worries, it’s just the dude who got my number who knows that I’m busy but has decided to take a walk and has conveniently found himself right outside of my house. I put my phone on silent, ignored his text messages and continued with my workout. Then I heat up some water, get my bucket bath on and come back into the room to find that I’ve missed more calls and more text messages saying that he is outside my house again…wanted to see if he could stop by and say hello. NO. so then I’m fooling around on the internet (because I made up the skype date with my dad, I’m a liar…I feel bad but…I needed an excuse and people don’t take, “facebook chatting with my friends” seriously) and I’m missing call after call from him, and a text that says he’s near my house again, he’d like to say, “hi.” So I got really fed up and texted him, “I’m chatting with my dad, good night.” was a little creeped out that he’d been outside of my house so many times that day, despite me having told him I was busy…actually in hind-site… while I was letting him know I was busy he probably translated that to “I’m going to be home for the rest of the night,” jokes on me I guess.

I gather from this experience that what happens is that the guy calls and calls and calls until the gal decides to go out with him so he’ll stop. Then somewhere in there there’s a switch that flips and the woman decides not to fight it anymore and they get married, she has some kids, and he takes a lover or lovers…
What? That was weird... sorry....
I’m really like…anti-Guatemalan-dudes right now. I keep finding out that all of these men, whom I’ve met as part of a married couple with children, have a lover or lovers and some with babies with their lovers. I also just heard a story about a woman who came home after work only to find that all of her belongings were thrown out on the street because her husband decided that he wanted his mistress to move in and his wife to move out. Did he tell her? No, he humiliated her in front of the whole town (even beyond having a lover other than his wife) kicking her out of her own home leaving her to carry all of her things to her mother’s house. Everyone still talks about how sad it was for her. AW-FUL.
The thing that really gets me about it is that all of this is generally known by people and it is quietly tolerated. I mean…These women just…raise their children and maintain the home while their husbands do whatever they want- and further, if the woman decides to leave her husband because of said infidelities that SHE is the one who is looked down on. I mean…What. The. Hell.

I know that this happens in the US, maybe more than I know about but I feel like I would be completely justified in leaving someone who wasn’t faithful to me and I feel that I would have the support of many people in doing so. In fact…women in the states who tolerate their husbands affairs are often the ones who are looked down on for not having the balls to leave them. These are confusing times.

I don’t want to make it seem as though there are no good relationships down here or that women can‘t leave their husbands because of some cultural rule, there are women who have left their husbands and started over and there are just as many people who are happily married or dating and clearly love and are true to one another; but the plethora of infidelity stories have worn me down. I'm starting to feel like a real wet blanket.
That’s all I have to say about that.

I may have to take a break. Deep breath.
--------

On to stuff that doesn’t make me so heated…

Okay.
So I had a PDM (Project Design and Management) Workshop and it went GREAT! I was having a really good Spanish day…so that is always good news. During the workshop we introduced the different parts that make up a successful project. We had the participants make maps of their schools to help identify where the need in their school was and then we wrote objectives, did an example of a action plan, a plan for monitoring progress and how to evaluate whether or not the project was successful. Then we worked on compiling proposals to ask for money to fund the projects because as anyone can tell you- there is never enough money.
Basically we reminded them of the tools that they already have at their disposal (with few new tricks) that they can utilize to carry out a successful project in the school.
I took some photos… so here are those.


ordering the steps in the life of a project...



making maps of their schools

 I do lament that we didn’t get this workshop out sooner in the year…since the school-year is just about to end, but I hope that it inspired some of our schools to be proactive in starting infrastructure projects that are necessary for the students to practice healthy habits…like faucets for the kids to wash their hands.
We shall see…


For Marisha’s despedida dinner I cooked an epic meal… but I (oddly) did not take a lot of photos because I was cooking and cleaning up a lot…but I did take a few…
I’ve decided that garbanzo beans are amazing- the amount of stuff you can make with them is outrageous. I had so many garbanzo beans leftover from the party (because they expand to like 3X their dry-size when you cook them…just fyi) that I was able to make another batch of hummus and two batches of garbanzo curry the next week…which I fed to Damian, Juan-Jo and Maria. I plan to make it again soon… but back to the dinner party for Marisha’s despedida:

I made up a little dining room in the spare bedroom and I had the *brilliant* idea to make table-cloths out of butcher paper and put crayons on the table. This was awesome and I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before…from now on I am always going to do that when I do dinner with friends- the further the night goes on, the more awesome the tablecloth becomes, also the clean-up is timely.
We had falafal, pita bread, hummus, taziki sauce, camote (sweet potatoes), rice tabouleh salad, carrot cake (with cream cheese frosting), and Elephant ears. Oh and Mojitos…

Basically, I think the party went pretty well.

Falafal

Camote...yum

I also rearranged my room so that the “chi energy” can circulate better…well, I was bored one afternoon and needed a change, thought I’d look up how to feng-shui my room, so there’s that. I don’t have all of the necessary components available to do it completely effectively, but I had fun doing it. So I think it was a win.
I had everything wrong before, it was all set up to cut my chi energy, which is bad, I think. Ceiling lamp directly above my bed = bad, mirror on the wall opposite my bed = the worst, and bed was not facing the door. All wrong.
Now my room has way better energy… maybe.
It also said that the first thing that you see in the morning should be something that makes you happy- like a piece of art or something…so I’m going to make some sort of painting during the break that’s coming up. I hope I’m an artist…otherwise I may not be able to put it on my wall, well at least the one opposite my bed. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Okay, this blog is getting kind of long…but more than that I’m tiring of writing. So…here are some last minute thoughts:

- I spent about a half and hour trying to open a jar of pickles today and I hurt my hand. I’m disappointed.

- I think I’m really going to miss snow while I live here. I love it when it’s snowy out and I’m inside…preferably in a cabin with a fire and hot chocolate (with peppermint schnapps and or bailey’s Irish cream).

- I went back to the water park but the wave pool is still not done… also, wore jean shorts for a portion of the day.

- rocked French-braid pigtails yesterday. Felt like a 10-year-old.

- I bathed in a sweat lodge. Let me paint a picture for you, I’m crawling through the smallest hut opening known to man in my bathing suit so I can get inside a little sweat lodge to…sweat and bathe. It was pretty neat.

- it’s nice weather again! My laundry is drying really quickly and I love it.

- school is almost out, I have a few more schools to visit and then…well, I guess I’m going to have to find something else to do. I’ll let you know.

- I changed the look of my blog the other day… like it?

- I have started to forget the normal way to say things in English, for example, I was trying to say that something wouldn’t do/work and I said, that wont serve. As in what you say in Spanish, no sirve. I don’t know when this happened but after going to the water park and talking in English with other volunteers it was apparent that I can’t speak. I also just read through my blog up to here and saw that i wrote, "i do lament" when i was talking about my PDM workshop...yet another expression that i use here often, a little awkward in English. Oh well.

- a child was sitting in front of me in a van and he turned around and stared at me for an incredible amount of time. First I smiled at him: nothing, then I waved at him and said hello: nothing, 10 minutes passes: still staring, blank expression. I stuck out my tongue at him: he turned back around.

A view from the bus to one of my aldeas...if you squint you can see mexico...

- I really miss recycling/ organized trash management.

Okay. I’m done.
I really miss my friends and family right now…
hug each other for me.

Peace & love,
Kristin

moto-surfing and baba-ram

I fell asleep watching lords of dogtown and woke up thinking about surf ninjas.
good flick.
however, neither of those things have anything to do with this blog entry.
sorry if i misled you... sometimes these kinds of tangents are unavoidable.

still interested? great, i'm glad you hung in there... it's a long blog entry this week, so if you think you may need to take a bathroom break or refill your coffee cup/martini glass- you go right ahead.

----

I was sitting alone in my room on a Friday night, drinking room-temperature white wine out of a warped, plastic, coffee mug when it hit me: I live in Guatemala. Weird.

There was a point, I don’t know when it happened, but things changed. “Going home” became “going back to site” as opposed to on a plane, bound for the states. I finally feel like I’m finally starting to have stuff figured out. Don’t get me wrong…I’m still surprised on a regular basis by things that happen around me…but my head isn’t tilting as far to the right when I try and understand -which is nice.

I‘ve even become accustomed to receiving calls and texts activating emergency procedures for natural disasters…Currently we’re on STANDFAST as we await a hurricane/tropical storm “Matthew”…this of course came as no surprise to me, mostly because I did laundry the other day and every time I do laundry it rains for so long afterwards that my clothes start to mold on the line I’ve strung up in the house. It’s good times.

I used to feel like a grounded teenager on homecoming weekend (yeah, it was serious) when we would get the STANDFAST order; (cue pouty, self-righteous behavior) especially when I would look out my window to blue skies and sunshine (very misleading) but after my experience with the landslide and heavy rains coming back from PDM and most recently, going back to site after a night in Xela (story to follow), I am starting to appreciate the rules a little bit, (our little girl’s growing up…sigh). don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of objections to being treated like a college-educated infant but I’m starting to understand the reasoning behind it a little bit better.

Just a few of the phrases I never want to hear again are, “corrase seño! Ya viene la tierra” “esta cayendo la tierra!!! Corrase!!!” (translation: Run miss! The earth is coming! The earth is falling! RUN!). All I can say is AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

If their goal by saying these things was to make this seño lose her cool, well done!

Once upon a time there was a peace corps volunteer who wanted to spend the night in Xela where she could go shopping, eat Indian food and hang out with her friends…

So I went to Xela on Friday morning to decompress a little from the past weeks’ activities. I was met by my darling, Claire and we celebrated our reuniting with a little bit of shopping. We bought groceries and hit up the brand new MegaPaca (basically an enormous ValueVillage/thriftstore) and then the market where I bought an ADORABLE pair of sandals.

Well, I’m an idiot and didn’t put the sandals in my backpack and instead carried them in the plastic bag that was given to me. Long story short, actually, not a long story at all- I forgot them. I left them on the micro bus (shuttle) that took us from the market to the park where our hostel was located. And that was that. Very upsetting.

I comforted myself with some Indian food…it never ceases to amaze me how wonderful that place is. Life-changing would probably be overly generous…but as I was just off of the emotional low of losing a brand-new pair of sandals (that were not in my budget for the month) I’m going to go ahead and say it, life-changing dinner. YUM. Then we went out for the night and I even danced (I know, shocking). I awoke the next morning, ate a great breakfast at the black cat (our hostel) and then hit the road. I couldn’t financially justify staying another night when I’d spent (and lost) the money I would have spent on the hostel for the second night on my sandals. So I started the clock on my 6-hour trip back to site. My plan was to get to Hue hue (the capital of the department that I live in) and decide whether or not the weather looked good enough to make the 4 hour trip up to my site, if it was raining I was going to stay, if it was sunny and nice, I was going to chance it. Well…it was sunny and nice, so I chanced it. As it turns out, not a good idea.

We were about 2 hours into the trip when we came across a landslide that had covered the entire highway and was about a football field wide. Well, everyone de-boarded the bus, and looked up at the landslide with concern. I had been listening to my ipod and missed the announcement about the next plan of action so I asked a woman who was trying to re-board the bus that I had just gotten off of. The woman explained to me that I would have to walk around the landslide to the other side where there were busses waiting to take me on to to my site, but to be very careful because the landslide was likely to fall more; I’d better hurry before it started raining harder. I did not like this. Based on my previous experience with the landslide and washed-out road, I was less than confident to travel in inclement weather conditions. I watched a group of women begin to walk through the landslide area on the road and decided to follow them through. As I got closer I was dissuaded by a construction worker that was standing next to a truck that was completely covered, minus the Cab of the truck, with debris from the landslide. He directed me to the muddy area off the right side of the highway, where a cornfield was planted on an incline and people were tromping through to the other side, insisting that it was safer for me.

I stood on the edge of the highway for a bit, contemplating the best plan of action…I was wearing loafers, not the best all-terrain shoes, and I looked up at the landslide to my left to try and gauge how dangerous it might be, thinking it would be better to just turn around and go back. Just then it started raining harder, and a couple of men came up beside me and offered to carry my bags and told me that I must hurry because the rain was getting worse. I was still deciding when they grabbed my things and had started to move, the last member of their group grabbed me by the wrist and told me (in broken English no less) to be careful because it was dangerous and pulled me along. I half-jogged my way through the mud following the line of people in front of me through the corn-field when I heard a sound and then people yelling for everyone to run because more rocks had begun falling down the landslide. Yeah, I got my life together really quick, climbing up rocks and mud (effectively covering myself in it) with the grace and poise of a drunken billy-goat, until I was (relatively) safe in the bus on the other side. Let’s put it this way, if I was playing “never have I ever” and someone said, “never have I ever almost wet my pants and cried while running through a muddy cornfield in a rainstorm during a landslide…” I would have to put a finger down, because that was most certainly me. I don’t think I stopped shaking until I was back in my home with some macaroni and cheese in my stomach and Bridget Jones in my DVD player.

I will say this however, these near-death (or…well, perceived by me to be “near-death”) experiences have taught me to appreciate, or at least realize the risk I put myself at on a daily basis…and I’ve got to say I would really, like REALLY rather be safe than sorry…alive than dead; I mean, I’ve got stuff I want to do that I would need to be alive for…so….I‘m going to think about that the next time I let some men grab my shit and drag me through a corn maze of doom (overly dramatic? Probably…but lets just let it go…).

DEEP BREATH.

Phew. Now that that’s over…

I am sad today. My dear friend and training-town pal, Brent, is going home. I do not know all of the details surrounding the situation nor understand the administration’s reasoning for letting such a great guy and PCV go, but that is what has happened. I do know that he will be greatly missed by his fellow PCVs and by the schools and community in which he has lived and worked in Alta Verapaz (aka, the jungle). We’ll always have San Luisito… sigh.

That’s all I can say about that right now.

In other news, Guatemala’s Independence Day came and went- mostly in the form of a huge parade (and an astounding number of marching bands). I had the (good?/mis?)fortune of living on the parade-route so I was able to experience the parade from my window/roof/doorstep/shower as it went by. Here’s what I saw: A lot of adorably-clad children in matching outfits, a lot of scantily-clad adolescent girls (in matching outfits), a lot, and I mean A LOT of marching bands, and a few groups of traditionally-clad Mayan men, women and children (the majority carrying some variation on a basket of fruit). Each school in the area had their own space in the parade and had been practicing for weeks beforehand to bring their "A" game.
Here I am, watching the parade and enjoying myself and I start to notice that the groups of kids who are dressed the same are like, REALLY dressed the same- the exact same, down to earrings, socks and shoes and the Peace Corps Volunteer in me got really…well, frustrated.

For example: a group of girls are all playing tambourines and walking down the street wearing the same boots, skirts, crop-tops, vests, cowboy hats, and earrings. I think about this; I know that the boots go for at least 200Q (having looked in to buying some myself) and let‘s face it, the store isn‘t letting these kids borrow the boots, which, from the looks of them, are all brand-new. Then let’s factor in the money spent on all of the clothing - how much does a spandex crop-top go for these days? I can’t even begin to guess. The issue that I had was that as I’m looking at all of these kids, who will surely outgrow these outfits within the year, all I began to see was the incredible amount of money that was spent to make them all look uniform.

So this is me: I’m working in the schools, preaching about the importance of good hygiene and that every child have the necessary items available to them to aid in maintaining good hygiene, freely acknowledging that it will cost each family a little bit of money and being told that there simply isn’t enough.

In some schools, mostly urban but some rural as well, it has not been a big problem to have each student bring in their own toothbrush, cup, towel etc. to leave in the classroom, however, there are also schools and communities where my efforts have been met with resistance, where director’s have voiced their feelings about the school’s perceived inability to participate in the program on the basis of the financial constraints of the parents of the students.

Now, cue up to the end of the school-year, I’m watching the Independence Day Parade…and I’m thinking, “okay, so they can all afford the matching hoop earrings and knee-high boots…but we're lacking money for a toothbrush? okay...hmmm."
I suppose I can’t judge it too hard, what with all of the money I have gladly spent on Halloween costumes over the years against how painful it was for me to spend money on things that I actually needed…like band-aids or countertop spray... It’s a priority thing, I understand that. It just tells me that I’m going to have to work harder to make the parents of these children see the benefits of preventative health enough to make it a priority, to make it competitively valuable enough to spend money on. Okay….I’ll…do it!

I just realized that this blog entry is getting to be a little lengthy… and I’m getting tired so I’ll just throw these last little bits out there- take them as you will.

-I have really comfortable shoulders apparently (I will assume it‘s genetic, thanks mom &dad); I know this because people are constantly sleeping on them when I am on the bus.

-Our pressure cooker has broken so I have resolved to cooking beans the slow way…and I think I like them better, despite the fact that they take FOREVER.

-I am planning to cook and enormous feast as a Despedida (goodbye-party) for PCV Marisha who lives in the next town over. Don’t worry, I’ll take pictures.

-I have planned a really sweet PDM (project design and management) workshop that is finally going to happen on the 4th of next month; I had a really good time making posters for it. More picture taking.

-School ends on the 18th of next month so I’ve got one more visit and then a bunch of unstructured time ahead of me…which means you should all probably be expecting some more haikus.

-I have been learning, “sitting on the dock of the bay” on my guitar. My fingers hurt.

-I wish I was going to be in the states for Halloween…I really want to carve a pumpkin and dress up like a clown.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading…I hope some of it is entertaining! Miss you guys!

Peace & Love,

Kristin

p.s. my "fast" internet has expired for this month...so the pictures that go with this entry will eventually surface...maybe next month...

LOVE LOVE LOVE!

oh the weather outside is weather

Oh the weather outside is weather…

It has been an interesting few weeks here in Guatemala. Lots and lots of mudslides and fatalities and crops getting drowned out and Peace Corps Volunteers being put on Standfast (its like being grounded to your site).

As was expected, the productivity of my school-visits has reached a plateau as we near independence day. My schools are far too busy with dance and music practice for the big day (15^th) to be working on Healthy Schools stuff. After that i've got a solid month before schools let out for the "summer" so we'll see if anyone actually wants to work...I have a feeling it may be a lost cause.

This is a look back at the month of August. Also some pictures of all of the food I have been making, I have been KILLING IT in the kitchen. If I make a cookbook that’s what I’m going to call it, I just decided that right now- Killing it in the Kitchen with Kristin™

Yep, that just happened.

So here’s the food montage.

Some Chilli

and some veggie soup...

...Margarita Pizzas

Yumm Bowl!

Elephant Ear

and a hamburger.

Now that we’ve established I’m a rockstar/fat kid we can move on…


I found and purchased Hellboy I and II in the market in Antigua and I think I’ve watched it an embarrassing amount of times. It may seem a little bit lame…but just know this about me and love me anyway.


About my trip to the dentist…


I didn’t end up getting a root canal but I did cry my face off in the dentist’s office. I went in and they took new X-rays (despite my having brought the one I had taken in my site) and didn’t see any problems; they decided that the reason I was having pain was because my two fillings (one on the bottom tooth and one on the tooth above it) were not ground down enough and my uneven bite had created pressure points. The solution? To grind off the parts of the filling that were uneven. So she put a drill in my mouth and went to work…zero Novocain. IT WAS AWFUL. You know when you go to the dentist and they ask you to just raise your hand if you feel any pain? Not so much at that office. As I’m crying and raising my hand she keeps taking the drill out of my mouth and telling me, “okay, okay, no more of the drilling then” and then she’d switch the drill heads and go back in. At one point in the appointment I was crying so hard, my face was literally dripping with tears so she grabbed the bib that I was wearing and patted my face with it. When it finally came time to tell her if the pain was gone when I bit down, I was in so shaky and sweaty that I couldn’t tell. I left all puffy and sniffling and still can’t chew food on the left side of my mouth, only now I have hot and cold sensitivity as well; joy. I don’t know if my experience was normal for that kind of treatment but I am inclined to think not; pretty sure I haven’t cried at the dentist since I was 6. I don’t want to come off as a whiner, I am trying to look for the humor in the situation. I feel like once it’s funny I’ll be willing to make another appointment with the dentist, but right now I want nothing to do with more dental work. I’d rather just chew on the right side of my mouth for a while and use the extra soft toothbrush and pro-alivio toothpaste. I am just realizing that I forgot to tell the nurses this…I should probably do that… I bet they’re getting tired of me calling them all the time.



Speaking of me calling the nurses all the time…


I got a really cool skin infection on my face. It was really awful. I’ll tell you what, it’s really hard to promote “healthy schools” when people think that they’re going to catch something from you. I didn’t think that it was that bad right? I thought it was maybe just some stress-triggered thing from my near-death rainstorm/landslide/waterfall drive home from the project design and management workshop with my profe (I’ll tell you about it next). So I decided to just wait it out a few days and see if it would resolve itself. I called the gas guy to bring me some more propane and I put on a little bit of makeup and a hat; the first thing the gas guy says, “whoa, what happened to your face? That looks really bad.” THANK YOU. So I said something like…“I don’t know, I’m sick or something, you can put the gas over there, its Q.114 right?” and he left, I washed my face and looked in the mirror and decided it was time to take a picture and send it to the nurses to see if it was something that I should be concerned about. No, I wont show you the picture but imagine me, I’m making the saddest face ever and it looks like I’ve got chicken pox all over my face…got it? Yeah, so I put work on hold because I couldn’t figure out a way to leave my house during the daylight hours without getting a lot of commentary on my hideousness. The nurses decided that it would be a good idea for me to get in to see the dermatologist and get this infection taken care of; so I go back to Guatemala City for the second time that month. So, so poor by the end of the month. I dressed myself up like a celebrity avoiding the paparazzi and hit the road. I saw the doctor, got some drugs and some topical stuff and headed back to site. I was so happy to be back, I can’t even tell you. I think I spent equal amounts of time in my site as I had on the road last month, it was nice to be in my own bed…in my own house where I could let my skin heal and make my own food…and watch Hellboy.



My life flashed before my eyes…made me miss theme parties.


My near-death experience…Okay, that’s a little bit dramatic but at the time I was pretty sure I was going to die. On the way back from PDM Workshop with Profe Lisandro we took Mari and her counterpart back to her site which is like 2 ish hours from mine. Well we went up into the mountains to drop them off and while we were there it started raining…like REALLY raining. There was some concern as to whether or not we were going to be able to make it out because often when it rains up there the roads to get back to the highway become blocked. Well Profe Lisandro and I decided that we really would rather go home than stay and try and wait out the rainstorm, since it had just started we thought we had a pretty good chance of getting out. So wrong. We are driving down this, well, mountain and we are taking our time to try and be as safe as possible when we come to one area of the road that looks like a waterfall is running down from the straight-up mountain to our left and then flowing over the road in front of us where it waterfalls again over the cliff on our right. The first thing profe lisandro says, “oh no, I don’t like this, this is really dangerous.“ Naturally I stayed completely cool under pressure. Yeah right. So Profe gets out of the car and starts talking with these two guys who are walking up the hill to see if they think that we can get across; right away I’m thinking this is a bad idea, I am just seeing our little pickup being washed over the right side of the cliff. The men that profe spoke to thought it was not possible, so we sat and waited for the rain to let up a little. There was a brief softening of the rain and profe got out (in his business clothes…in the pouring rain) and started to move boulders and tree branches and other misc. stuff that washed down the mountain and into the road with the other two men. So, long story short, we made it across the river in the road but only after we got stuck in the mud in the middle of it, I was terrified. Then, not 200 feet further down we run into a landslide that has covered the entire road. At this point I am thinking that we’re pretty much screwed. There’s a river behind us, washing out the road, and there’s a landslide in front of us, blocking the road. We’re not going anywhere. Then I start to think about the likelihood that another landslide happens right where the car is…that would pretty effectively ruin my plans to get home/live. So I called the peace corps office to see if they had any sort of “Disaster Preparedness” lecture they could give me, you know, maybe some tips about, “in the event of a mudslide happening on a narrow road in the middle of a rainstorm on the edge of a cliff, you should____” ? well, I ended up talking to one of the Nurses who happens to know the area really well because she used to live near there, and she asks me, “are you more worried about the mountain falling on you to your left or the road washing out under you to your right?” Shit. hadn’t even thought of the road washing out on me to my right, a whole new set of death scenarios came to mind. In the end a crew of locals helped to make a passage in the landslide wide enough for one car to pass through. We were the first people through and 10 minutes later we were down at the highway. Thank god. We stopped at a little café on the side of the road so that we could wash up and try and dry off a little bit. We drank some coffee and got back on the road. 8 and half hours after we left the hotel where the workshop was held we arrived back home. It was 10:30PM and I was hungry and needed to bathe. So I put some water in a pot to boil it for a bucket-bath only to find that all of the propane was gone; that my roommate had left me with none. This was a terrible turn of events for me, since I also didn’t have any food except for and apple and some dried pasta in the house because I’d spent the majority of the month traveling. I gave up, I washed my face, changed my clothes, ate an apple, went to bed. Awoke the next morning to a brand new day and skin problems. It was one of my top 10 worst peace corps days. But it’s over now and I’m glad.



Other things I am very glad about: I received packages! I love love love my friends and family. I am so lucky to have you all! This week’s all-stars are Meredith and Elizabeth Joy.


Mere- love the scarf, headband and yumm sauce! I have been trying to eat it slowly but it’s just. So. Good. Just thinking about it now has me craving another yumm bowl. Putting it on the docket for tomorrow.


Lizzy- Currently on disk 11 of 37 in NCIS… it brought me back after my life-issues last month, can’t thank you enough for sending those to me. I think I actually ate cheeze-its as a meal one afternoon. Mmmm…so much goodness.


I'm all tuckered out, uploading those photos took FOREVER. blah.


LOVE LOVE LOVE!

xoxo,

Kristin

deep thoughts with kristin...

Not that exciting actually, but here we go!
here are some things I have observed recently…

Toilet seats are a privilege, not a right.

Its better to sit towards the front of the bus, especially if someone is throwing up out the window.

If you get a face infection try not to rip your face off… like in “face off,” it’s bad news and doctors will berate you for it.

Spiders are scary but they eat other bugs…so kill them sparingly.

Don’t give your phone number to women you’ve just met on a bus, they might text it to the ayudante right in front of you or obsessively call you ...

Always charge your phone when it’s low on battery, you don’t know when you may be without power for an extended period of time.

Haiku’s are fun, write some next time you’re bored.

Having a guitar does not make you a master singer/songwriter…nor (sadly) able to play it without practice.

Ayudantes in 4 caminos will think you are going to Antigua, Pana, or Xela so hold on tight to your bag because they’ll grab it and run towards the bus they think you want to be on.

Be careful asking to use the bathroom in Chimaltenango, you might accidentally go into a whore-house.

Just because the postman sends the missionary in town a text-message to let him know he has a package does not mean that you can get him to do the same for you... i think we can all agree this is weak-sauce.

Having cocoa powder, flour and other misc. baking goods in your home can be a hindrance to maintaining a healthy diet…

Sometimes your text messages really don’t send…sometimes they send x100; so coming off like a jerk or a psychopath is to be expected.

If you get a pet…they’re going to get fleas; act accordingly.

Try not to have multiple medical problems in the same month, it’s a real drain on the finances.
…that’s all for now.
Oh and…

THANKS FOR THE PACKAGES!!!
Special shout-out to Dad and Kathleen and Megan O’Connor; you guys are wonderful!
Peace & Love!

"Baby when the lights go out..."

"Every single word cannot express, my love and tenderness"
...but i'm going to try.

The power went out the other day and did not come back on for another 20 (ish) hours. Since I did not expect this turn of events I did not charge my phone or my computer…or my ipod, so not having any sort of media to toy with (and as my headlamp ran out of batteries), things got a little bit silly once it got too dark to read. So I sat in my room by candlelight I wrote these (cough) exquisite (cough cough) haikus (5-7-5) and have chosen to share them with you all now.

Yo te extrañ o

Aquí estoy soñ ando

Veinte meses má s

--

It’s raining outside

Dogs are humping in the street

Guatemala, meh.

--

Lightning slices sky

Thunder seconds behind cracks

Clothes hang on the line

--

It is freaking loud

Hearing everything outside

Apple-bottom jeans.

--

Rain is falling hard

Upon my lamina roof

Tea boils on the stove

--

The power is out

It’s really dark in my room

Seven thirty-five.

--

The candles flicker

To the drumming of the rain

I wish you were here.

I think my favorite one is the one about tea boiling on the stove, or clothes hanging on the line. I also played some guitar…but it is more difficult to share those successes with you.
The power did end up coming back on around midnight and all of my various stuff started to glow with the promise that it may be charged and usable again soon, which was great.
That’s all I’ve got for now, I’m off to a Project Design and Management workshop with one of our Directors for the rest of the week. It looks like I’ll be speaking Spanish for the next 6 hours while driving to the training…and most likely for the rest of the weekend.
I have a feeling my brain is going to hurt when I get back. Wish me luck!
Peace & Love,
Kristin
p.s. KC, AV & UB- I got your packages, THANK YOU SO MUCH!
P.p.s. If anyone else is dying to send me a package I could really use some nutritional yeast (like from whole foods or Fred Meyer’s bulk food sections, at least a few cups‘ worth) some slivered or ground almonds (a few cups maybe), and some ascorbic acid (I don’t know what this is but it’s on the recipe).
I am attempting to make my own Yumm sauce to blow Guatemala’s mind.
Missing everyone! Hope all is well!

guate is happening...

guate is happening?

let me tell you...

So…when insect repellent says it’s good for “8 hours of protection” it does NOT mean that you’ll be okay 10 hours later.

Apparently, as is the case with sunscreen, reapplication of insect repellent is also key. Noted.

I also totally thought of mosquitoes as more of a “dusk” bug…as in they only come out in the evening…but as I was just bitten at 8:30 AM I am going to go ahead and say that my ideas of when they come out was wrong, much how I was under the misapprehension that roosters only crow at dawn which is also, VERY WRONG.

I am learning so much.

On other things I’ve learned… I hate animals in Guatemala. Admittedly, I wasn’t particularly crazy for dogs in the states, but I grew up with a dog and certainly did not hate them. In Guatemala however, I feel like a good portion of the dogs are…like rats. They carry diseases and the majority of them that are living on the street have incredible medical problems that can, at the sight of them, effectively make me sick to my stomach. I want to help them but… I don’t want to touch them.

Certain types of “mange” for a dog translates to scabies on people. Scabies are gross, I think we can all agree on that. Oh, and lets not forget fleas because they can come home from a street dog with you and infest your mattress and anyone who’s had fleas can tell you, they’re a real hassle to get rid of and their bites suck,. oh and ringworm is gross too… gross.

Disclaimer: the following story is sad/graphic so if you’re not good with that stuff… don’t read it.

Skip to section that says, “On to other things…”

A few weeks ago a dog was hit by a car outside of my window. The car, naturally, drove on and left this puppy crying and bleeding in the street and people would look at it while they walked by, comment on it and continue walking. Oh, and this was great, I’m pretty much crying and feeling sick because it’s so unfortunate and the yelping and crying is pretty unbearable when I hear a dog fight break out…of course. other dogs are attacking the dog that was hit by the car while it tries to drag it’s body to the side of the road. Nice, real nice. I wanted to go out and help the dog but as previous blogs would evidence, they’re always trying to attack me and I was afraid that if I picked up the wounded dog that I would (a) hurt the animal more (b) get bitten by the animal, or (c) the other dogs that had congregated would attack me (either misunderstanding my intentions with the wounded dog or because they‘re mean street dogs). Luckily, after about an hour, the “owners” of the dog, (I say “owners” because I don’t consider most people who have dogs here to take much responsibility for their animals, I think that being a “pet owner” entails a little bit more than giving the dog leftover tortillas) came out and picked up the dog and took it home, where it probably died and was thrown somewhere for someone else to deal with, like most things. I know that this is probably what happened because the last time an animal died in the street near my house it was thrown in the area where we compost our organic trash and burn the inorganic and my roommate and I found it after following a particularly foul odor; it was really unpleasant.

The other thing that really gets me about animals is that there isn’t a Veterinarian in my town. Why? Well, there was a vet but he couldn’t stay in business up here because NO ONE took their animals in to him. No one has enough money, or cares enough about their animals to do preventative health measures like vaccinations and getting them neutered or spayed or to take their dog in when it gets hit by a car/ attacked by another dog, etc.

I was reminded of a time when I was a kid and one of my friends and I found a pigeon with a broken wing and we were really torn up about it- so much so that we got our babysitter to drive us out to a bird aviary where we thought that it could get some help and be safe. I wanted nothing more than to take the dog that was hit by the car to an animal hospital but there is just nothing like that here.

On top of the occasional car accident, there are some dogs that are so…pathetically ill that I wish someone would just put them out of their misery. There is one dog in particular that has gaping sores where a tumor has obviously ruptured some part of him and to look at him is actually painful for me, it’s like he is so miserable I want to free him by giving him euthanasia. Guatemala would really benefit from some sort of “spay/neuter your animal” initiative…and a dog catcher.

I would like to think that some of the dogs that I see that are really ill and poorly cared for with matted fur etc. could be rehabilitated…but their chances of anyone doing that for them are so bleak. I really wish I was more of an animal lover, that I could do something to help these animals without the fear that they would get me sick or otherwise harm me. Breaks my heart that I don’t have the skills to do that for them.

Sorry to have ranted on a bit above…it’s really been getting to me.

On to other things…

I was on the bus a few weeks ago with some friends and we saw a guy with a T-shirt that said, “Simon says, ‘go fuck yourself.’” He was like holding a baby and didn’t look like he would say something so audacious but there it was. It was a perfect example of how all American t-shirts eventually get bought and worn, even if they say something really stupid. They’ll make it down to markets where people don’t speak that language, nor care what it says, a shirt is a shirt.

Another example (that to this day I really wish I had photographed) was on a woman in traje (Mayan clothing) who was wearing the traditional woven skirt and a t-shirt that said, “I heart frat boys.” Now, lets not pretend like I wouldn’t have worn that shirt at one point in my life…I do kind of heart frat boys; but the contrast of a woman in traditional Mayan clothing wearing a shirt that said she loved frat boys was pretty incredible. You know she probably just saw the heart and that the shirt was pink and went for it. So rest assured that when you see a shirt that says something really silly on it that’s on sale because someone who ordered it misread how popular it was going to be, it will be worn somewhere (and it will make someone who understands what’s on it laugh).

After last month’s Antigua festivities I was pretty thoroughly Antigua’d-out…lucky me- I’m going back (for a root canal)! I have been having a lot of pain in one of my teeth on the left side of my mouth. At first it wasn’t bad but when it got to the point where I couldn’t even chew oatmeal on that side of my mouth…I decided to go ahead and make the call.

Before I made my appointment to get it taken care of I wanted to have some idea about what I was going to need to get done. Luckily I have some awesome dentist friends here in my site! I went and saw my friend Sara and she took an X-ray of my tooth which showed that it’s got a bit of a dark spot inside it. It looks like when I had my dental work done in the US before leaving (it was pretty substantial…energy drinks are really bad for your teeth, fyi) that there was a cavity that they filled for me where they did not grind off enough of the cavity part before filling it. So the tooth is sealed on the outside but it’s…got inner problems. So…the prognosis is that I will be needing a root canal. I’m somewhat concerned, having never had a root canal before. Meh, I’m sure it’ll go fine. I got an appointment for this Friday…which turns out to be Friday the 13^th… I hope nothing weird happens.

Something to look forward to though, is that while I’m there I’m going to treat myself and my newly fixed teeth to some good food, so that’s exciting.

I’d better get going, the post man isn’t going to stalk himself. I’m just so excited for packages that are in the mail for me!

Until next time

Make good choices, wear your insect repellent, pet your animals, don’t buy a ridiculous shirt just because it’s on sale, and stay away from energy drinks.

Peace & Love,

Kristin

　

　

　

　

the 4th and other shenanigans

I got bored today, so I cut myself some bangs.
They don’t look very good, so I bobby pinned them back and just like that I was back in junior high, growing-out my bangs again.
Bangs are one of those things that always seem like a good idea when you don’t have them but as soon as you get them you wish you hadn’t done that. Oh well, they’ll grow. Life goes on.

On to more exciting things…

4^th of July

Or rather, on the 3^rd of July Peace Corps Volunteers left their sites in various rural communities in Guatemala to get together in Antigua to have a little party…

Some of us arrived a few days before to attend the All-Volunteer Conference at the office where we learned about natural disasters, coffee plantations certifying organic, Appreciative Inquiry etc. etc. One of the benefits of attending (besides tantalizing lectures) was that we were able to meet volunteers who we would probably never see during our service otherwise, turns out there are quite a few of us here.

As for the party, we all convened around noon to start the festivities. There was a stage with a huge projection of the world cup game on inside and a tent with tables and chairs set up outside near the BBQ area where there were tables filled with potato salad, chips and all the fixings for burgers and hotdogs. People were decked out in their red, white, and blue and it looked like it was going to be a beautiful day. Naturally about an hour into the party it started raining like hell, but hey, that’s Guatemala for you.

I sang the National Anthem for the party…

After the first verse of the song I lost my way a bit… I looked up and saw my friends standing with their hands on their hearts and some of them with their hands at their brow line doing a salute and I lost my concentration and giggled…luckily then everyone started cheering and stuff so it wasn’t completely awkward.

Then I continued to sing the rest of the song the whole way through and though I botched the high note a little…I feel it went well. Numerous people supposedly took videos of it and I had every intention of putting one up on here…but they have yet to surface. So you’ll just have to imagine it.

Once I finished singing I treated myself to some Moza (beer) and relaxed with my friends. I had a great time.

There was a talent show portion of the 4^th of July party as well and it never ceases to amaze me how talented people are. It also made me really jealous that I cant play the guitar yet…maybe for next year I’ll prepare a little something…better start practicing now.

Then, like that (snaps) the fun was over and it was back to site! I got back to Jacal and went to my schools to see how the progress with their Rincones de Salud are coming… my job really sucks sometimes.

Not only did the majority of my schools not have their Rincones up, there were several teachers who claimed that they didn’t know what they needed to have (despite my leaving a detailed packet and instructions with the school’s director). One example; I arrive at the school, fend off some inappropriate flirting by the director of the school and go classroom to classroom to see their Rincones. Well, I show up in one class and ask the teacher if I could see their Rincon and he says, “sure miss, here it is” and points to a corner where there are about 15 brooms and not one thing more. I go to another classroom and ask to see their “Rincon de Salud” and the director steps in and corrects me, saying that I meant to say, “Rincon de Aseo.” I turn to the director and say, “Rincon de Salud.” Well, naturally they didn’t have it. The reason this pissed me off is that most of the schools already had a “Rincon de Aseo” in their classrooms before we started working with them, where they stack all of their cleaning equipment and some personal hygiene stuff; but it does not meet the requirements to be a Rincon de Salud, which is specific to the Healthy Schools Program, because it is lacking too many things. It was especially frustrating because the director was trying to pass off something they already had when I started working with them as something that they had done for the program, when that is just not the case at all. It was obvious to me that the director had not passed the information on to the teachers and when I asked him what he had done to explain it to the teachers he crept in towards me took my hand and told me that he really needed me to, “hold his hand on the project.” I just about grabbed him by his little shoulders and shook him, I was so annoyed. Please don’t do any work and hit on me, that’s what I like, clearly.

Naturally, after having some variation of that experience a few times, I went to one of my schools that has very few resources and expected the same. We’re talking garbage everywhere, kids without shoes, broken windows and glass everywhere, no water and not enough classrooms. I was blown away by their efforts towards the tasks I had assigned to them. All of the classrooms had a start on their Rincon de Salud, the majority had their Dado or Rouleta (dice or roulette) de Hygiene and a poster that had the “Promesa de Vida” (basically a vow to take care of yourself in regard to health) written on it. I left this school filled with a renewed sense of optimism about my job. Only to be battered down again by visiting another bad school the next day…so it goes. Haha

Then like that (snaps again) it was time to go back to Antigua for Reconnect. I had a great laid-back week in Antigua with my fellow training group pals. It was so great to stay up late hanging out and then get up early the next morning and see everyone again for training activities and later in the week, Spanish classes. It was a nice opportunity to get to know some people better that we didn’t have the chance to get to know very well during training. It was also helpful to have some more Spanish classes- although I have definitely improved my Spanish since arriving at my site, there are still things that confuse me, there are so many things I can improve on.

Oh, and supposedly Kirsten Dunst was in Antigua while we were there… someone who was staying in Damian’s hostel told him that she saw her in the park…so every time we saw a blonde or a large gathering of people the joke was, “oh my gosh, Kirsten Dunst!”

We never did see her…

I roomed with Claire during this week at the Hostel and we had a great time sampling all of the fine cuisine that Antigua has to offer (well as much as we could on our budget) and I’d say we did pretty good. We got Sushi one night that was excellent! I was afraid at first but I reasoned that I couldn’t get any sicker eating sushi at a restaurant in Antigua than I’d already been in this country from hot-dogs in the park or drinks made with tap water; so I chanced it. It was a good choice.

We also went to this funky little restaurant near the park that had gourmet ice cream. At first glance the restaurant doesn’t look like a restaurant at all- it looks like an art gallery with tables in it. There were 4 tables total and the room couldn’t have been bigger than 10’ x 20’. The draw of the restaurant was that it had fancy, home-made ice cream in interesting flavors like, Peach-Rose, and Apple Chipotle. The guy who owned/ran the place in my opinion was a bit well, bizarre. I knew I wasn’t going to like him pretty early on when we asked how much the ice cream was and when he told us, “20Q,” my darling Claire responded with “wow, jeeze that‘s expensive” or some variation thereof. And he countered with, “come on, 20Q? that’s like 2 dollars.”

Okay…first of all, that’s not 2 dollars, its more like $2.60, it’s using the 10 to 1 conversion rate that gets gringos into trouble, but that’s beside the point because we don’t get paid in dollars. It annoys me when people assume that we a) can’t do math and b) get paid in dollars. I guess I understand, I mean, we’re gringos but still, Annoying.

Well, none of the ice-cream flavors particularly appealed to me so when he asked me what flavor I wanted I told him I was not going to be having any ice cream; he looked at me like he didn’t understand so I added, “I’m actually in search of a brownie today so…I’ll wait” and he was like, “well, we have brownies” and he said it like he thought I was an idiot, like it was obvious that they had brownies. Excuse me, it wasn’t on the menu, how was I to know that? Of course, how silly of me.

Incidentally, it was the BEST brownie I’ve ever had…

So we’re all sitting at one of the tables, eating our various desserts and looking at all of the art around the room. I was noticing that there were lots of paintings by the same artists and I had a sneaking suspicion that the guy running the restaurant was also the artist. Well, not surprisingly, he was, and when one of us made a comment about one of his paintings he stepped in and started telling us his life story and what his art meant about feminism… all I got was that naked women = feminism. I don’t know much about it…he continued to tell us about how he is from the Bahamas and how his family brought electricity to the “natives.” The “natives” were apparently very ungrateful and resented his family for it and so he grew up amidst all of this adversity to then move to the states where he was still an outsider (because he grew up somewhere else), and finally ended up in “land of opportunity” aka Antigua, where he started a sort of cooperative for unknown artists and opened a restaurant/gallery. So all-in-all a pretty fascinating story and while he just wasn’t for me, the desserts were pretty delightful…so…I’ll probably be back.

After my week spent with hot showers, friends and access to awesome food I hopped on a bus and started the 9-hour trip back to my site. I successfully made it back in one day, I was really eager to be back home, not living out of my suitcase and spending outrageous amounts of money (but had I had more money I would have broken up the trip a bit, stopped in Xela and eaten some Indian food, alas, next time).

Since I’ve been back I have:

- tried to compose a wish list…so far it only consists of Boxes of Macaroni and Cheese and Neutrogena Fresh Foaming Cleanser in the blue bottle. I think it’s a good start.

- washed some laundry, hung it up and watched it get rained on for multiple hours…it’s still drying.

- visited one of my schools that had done nothing that I had asked. Sure.

- finished reading Slaughterhouse V and Marked (which is a new book series that is pretty much a combination of Harry Potter and Twilight, that Ms. Kristin Poggi sent me, awesome. I love you).

-received a package from the Linda (Lauren’s mom) with cards, a book, bubblegum and a teenage mutant ninja turtles DVD. Thanks so much! It definitely brought back some memories…

-killed a moth in my room the size of my hand. I showed it to my roommate and she was like, “ay si, mariposa!” (“oh yeah, butterfly”) and it made me wonder if it was the same word for both moth and butterfly…because as far as I’m concerned they are ENTIRELY different and should be labeled as such.

- saw a dog eating a diaper. It was terrible. Dogs are gross.

- written this blog entry, which is very long and I think I will stop now.

I am currently preparing for Dr. Sergio Mack’s (aka my boss') visit to my site for the meeting we have planned with all of our directors and various other community members…which will be happening tomorrow morning, so wish me luck!

I hope this finds everyone healthy and happy! I miss you all very, VERY much!

XOXO,

Kristin