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!