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