A New Year

…and the beginning of my second in service.

It was a dark and stormy night…

Well, it wasn’t dark, or stormy. I live in Guatemala and it’s the beginning of the dry season. So…


It was a dry and cool-ish day, and Kristin was freshly back from her vacation with her family and out on the hunt for a new place to live. As she turned the corner to say hello to her favorite tienda lady, there it was, the biggest dog she’d ever seen, looking at Kristin as if she had personally wronged it and it had a taste for her blood.

Okay, writing in the third person is starting to wear on me (probably on all of us) so I’m going to put and end to it right here and now and vow (well, try) not to do that again.

Ahem.

So I turned the corner and saw none other than the canine stunt double for, “Hercules” (aka, “The Beast”) from the Sandlot with his teeth bared. Now, the old me might have started to cry or yelled some sort of unconvincing, “no” in that dog’s direction, but the new me, the newly empowered me (hanging out with people who don’t speak any Spanish makes your confidence in your grasp of the language and culture skyrocket, try it sometime) decided not to take that abuse. So I knelt down to the ground and picked up a rock and as I stood, the dog retreated and order was restored.

I know, kind of anti-climactic…but I really wanted to start this blog with, “it was a dark and stormy night” and that was one way I could make that happen, indulge me.

I have returned to my site after having a wonderful visit with my family (story to follow) and I feel a renewed sense of enthusiasm for my work and life here in my site.

I have been in Guatemala for one year, as of January 5th, and probably by the time I actually post this blog entry it will be more towards the 13 month mark (almost half way!). It’s funny to think about because while some hours/days seem to drag on and on, the weeks/months pass so quickly that without even having realized it, I’m into my second year of service and my last 10 months with the schools.

Time to get some work done!

I have so many ideas on how to work more effectively with my schools this year that I am giddy with the possibilities (and conversely stressed out knowing that in the best of circumstances I will probably only accomplish ¼ of my goals…if I’m lucky). Such is life.

As school has only been in session for a week, having begun on the 17th that is all I have to report on my work-life at this time. Stay tuned for more updates.

As for the state of things in Guatemala, there are some issues. The Army has been deployed in Coban/Alta & Baja Verapaz to address the unrest surrounding the Zetas in Guatemala… no, not the Sorority; the drug Fraternity from Mexico. This is concerning to me (as I live close to the border with Mexico) but more so for those Volunteers who are stationed up in that Coban/Verapaz region, who have been evacuated from their sites and are awaiting clearance to return…they were evacuated just before Christmas and as of mid-January, the state of siege has just been extended and it is looking less and less like they will be returning anytime soon.

Now, let me be frank, I am in no way an authority on what’s going on in that area, to be honest, those of you in the states who have BBC or any other major broadcast news company probably have a better idea on what is going on than I do, as my news resources are a bit limited. So, lets just say, it’s about drugs being trafficked, power dynamics of those narco-trafficking groups, the government and maybe the upcoming elections…I also suspect involvement from the dancers on “America’s Best Dance Crew.”
All of which I would like to steer clear of.
…also that was a joke.

On to things I am an authority on…

“Burn dust and eat my rubber!”
-Christmas Vacation

Primarily quotes from movies… I’ve got PLENTY more where that came from.
The first half of my family (which consisted of Dad, Kathleen and my youngest brother, David) arrived into Guatemala the 12th of December and we spent the next few days getting to know Antigua (complete with me scaring them into hiding their money in their underwear).
Their first full day in Antigua, I took my dad to the Peace Corps Office, where I got my stitches taken out…which was great, barely left a mark. Then we spent the rest of the day taking in the endless amount of artisan markets and some restaurants that I can’t normally afford…which were choice.

The second day, I took them to meet my host family from training, Dona Betty and her four children, Mike, Yaccholi, Kimberly and Brandon. I had wanted for them to eat a typical Guatemalan meal…but as we were traveling the next day to Costa Rica, I opted for us to bring food to eliminate any chance of anyone getting sick. We brought a couple of chickens that we baked in the oven at the Hotel, I made a fruit salad, and Dona Betty prepared some tortillas and black beans for all of us to enjoy. The end result was a nice meal with me translating the conversation between my two families.

This gave my parents A LOT of motivation to learn Spanish, my dad in particular is really eager to learn after his experience and I am supportive of this goal.

Did I mention that we took all of this food on a chicken-bus to get there? Well, we did. I think this was a little hard on the fam…everyone was kind of big-eyed and white-knuckled by the time we arrived ha ha. Sometimes I forget how outrageous the Camionetas are to people who haven’t been on them before. Dave said it was like being on a roller-coaster and was “fun“, Dad (being the veteran camioneta rider, as I had taken him to the office with me on the Camioneta the day before) played it cool while he held on to the bar, and Kathleen…well, Kathleen decided that Camioneta rides were not for her haha.

from left to right, Dave, Dad, Kathleen, Dona Betty, Brandon, Kimberly, Mike, Yaccholi and yours truly.

After trying to give my family a little taste of the real Guatemala it was already time to catch our plane for Costa Rica.

Our first sunset from the deck of the house in Costa Rica

We arrived in Cost a Rica where my other siblings, my brother Rob and my Stepbrother, Jason, met up with us and we all piled into a matchbox SUV I must say that I disagree with the size assessment of cars in Central America. There were 6 of us and all of our luggage, including 2 surf boards, getting cozy in like, a CRV…and it was the biggest car they had for us. (Oddly, I was more comfortable on that ride, wedged in-between my brothers and Kathleen than I have been on many of my trips on busses here in Guatemala…so I was ready to rock.) Only after we had put our Tetris skills to the test in pushing the car to it’s max capacity, we were on the road, headed for Dominical down on the Southwest, Pacific Coast.

We stayed in a private home, that’s for sale I hear…so if you want to buy it, I can direct you to the couple who owns it.

We arrived at the house and cooked some brats and went to bed, tired from the day’s journey and spent the next 12 days swimming, surfing, boogie boarding, and taking time to relax. It was excellent.

another view from the deck

On our second night in the house the power went out around 8:30PM. Having spent a portion of my life in Guatemala without power (when it goes out inexplicably for days at a time) I pulled out a book and my headlamp and went to bed. For others, it was a less comfortable dark night; my brothers in particular were concerned about our safety because after looking down the hill and up the hill from us, it appeared that we were the only house without power; Robert slept in the living room that night, like a good guard dog.

The next morning we woke to the gardeners, Heber and his son, outside at the pool, keeping our little slice of heaven well-maintained. As the power had still yet to be restored, I walked outside in time to hear Robert asking them if they knew where the breaker-box was or if they knew why we didn’t have power, and here’s what Heber had to say about it,

“oh, no; someone probably cut the power to come up and rob the place but they must have come up and seen that you all were here and then left.”

“what?! Wait…someone cut the power to come up and rob us?”

“Yes, to cut the alarm; they probably didn’t know anyone was here, so when they got here and they saw there were people here, they left.”

Sensing that there was a miscommunication in there somewhere I got in to clarify…

“so, you’re saying that this has happened before? That people have cut the power to this house to come up here an rob it?”

“yes, maybe that was what happened”

“maybe? Okay, so is there a way for us to restore power?”

“yes, it is down the hill, we will go check it out”

A minute later, the power was back on but our insecurities about why the power was out in the first place were still at large.

Luckily, later in the afternoon, our neighbor and the house’s caretaker came by and cleared our confusion. What had happened was that there was a power surge on the town’s power grid. The other houses around us did not lose power because, unlike our house, they are not wired-in to the town’s main power grid. All that needed to be done was to walk down the hill (and I mean like…steep cliff when I say, “hill”) and reset the breaker.

So what was Heber talking about then?

Well, turns out that he was talking about something that had happened years earlier when the house was getting wired-in to the main breaker on the town’s circuit. Before the wiring was finished and buried underground, what actually happened was that thieves had seen that there was a bunch of electrical wires, out in the open, assessed that the copper wires were of value and come back to cut and to steal them.
This news put us all at ease, but before we let the caretaker leave we made sure to walk down the hill and learn how to reset the breaker, should the town experience another power surge we did not want to be without light for another 12-18 hours.

We played endless games of bananagrams...and it was awesome.

The rest of our trip was pretty tranquil. We swam in the pool and spent countless hours in the ocean; reaffirming my assessment that everything is better at the beach.
I even tried my hand at surfing…to find that it doesn’t exactly play to my strengths (or lack thereof in terms of upper-body muscle). However, I did get a chance to boogie-board my face off and it was magic.
It was also really awesome to have a kitchen to cook in with my family. Having discovered my deep love of cooking since leaving for Guatemala it was so nice to be able to cook and share recipe success secrets with my Dad.
Christmas/Robert’s Birthday was especially enjoyable this year. I will say that I missed having a Christmas tree and a fire in the woodstove but, passing the day at beach, dining out that evening and throwing some sugar cookies together that night more than made up for it.
More than anything I think that this trip was a really great opportunity for us to leave all of the holiday baloney behind and really try and appreciate our time with each other; all-in-all I think it was a very successful vacation…

our last sunset at the house...sigh

We parted ways in Costa Rica, Jason Portland-bound, Robert heading back to Chile and then on to Peru, and Dad, Kathleen, Dave and I back to Guatemala, where we would say our goodbyes and I would wonder in awe why (having not bought anything ) I always seem to leave with more than I came with before traveling back to site.
After my family left, I packed up my bag and left our beautiful hotel and headed for my old friend, the Burkhart hostel where I met up with Claire and we dished about our vacations with our families and how successful we thought our dinner to “introduce the folks” went the night before (general consensus: very pleased we did that).

We extended the fun and put off our trips back to our sites for a few more days to spend New Year’s Eve in Antigua with friends and then….with heavy steps (and even heavier backpack) I headed towards Mexico.

Once I was back I started fresh on my search for adequate housing only to find that I would not find anything nicer than where I was already living. So, defeated, I called the landlady of where the previous volunteers had lived and said, “is it still available?” to which she said yes and met me that evening to hand me the keys to my new castle.

I spent the next few weeks painting and cleaning and fantasizing about appliances that I would someday be able to afford to add to my little studio apartment.
First things first: painting. I decided to do a few walls in green and the others a fresh coat of white, which really made the place look so fresh and so clean. I had ambitions to paint my bathroom Fuscia/hot pink…but I was informed that they don’t carry that color in the smaller quantity of oil-based paint, naturally they only sell that color by the gallon….which I think is odd. So I went for purple instead, leaving one wall white as to avoid turning my bathroom into a cave. Between the paint and the tireless scrubbing of my bathroom’s tiled walls and sandpaper-esque floor it looked slightly cleaner than when I started; but I assure you, the amount of bleach and scrubbing that was used/done is proof that the bathroom is clean, despite it’s…shall we say, “rustic and musty” appearance and odor.
Task 2: Bathroom door. Now, since I have lived in Guatemala I have lived in 2 separate homes that have not had bathroom doors but rather, curtains. In my first home it was a heavy, lycra-knit (can that even exist?) curtain, and in my other home, it was a plastic, tissue-paper thin one. So I’m not going to judge the whole, “curtain” for privacy thing, once you get over your initial shock, in a house it works just fine. The problem with my bathroom door (well…my curtain) was that in addition to the charming scent of sewage that occasionally comes up through the drain in the shower/toilet, having only a curtain separating the bathroom from the kitchen just did not sit right with me. So I asked my landlord if we could put up a bathroom door; to which she replied, “yes, of course! No problem.” I was shocked by this…mostly because she was SO interested in adding a door and so not interested making me pay for it or taking it out of my rent; which was awesome. Then it was just a waiting game…mostly me waiting for the guy to come and install it. I would hear one thing and make sure that I was at the new place for the door to be put in and then after waiting a whole day, call my landlady and hear that, on no, it changed, he’s coming on Tuesday, not Monday. Well, that went on for a few weeks until last Friday when I came by after cleaning at my old place all day to find that a brand-new door was up; and it is BEAUTIFUL.
I texted Damian to share my excitement about my new door and he replied, “I guess we’re at the point in our service where a bathroom door is exciting.” to which I replied, “yep…pretty much.” so there you have it.

 

check out that fancy bathroom door...

my tiny, purple bathroom

After the bathroom door was installed I was in such an elevated state that I went right out and dropped my cash on an oven, a fridge, and a pressure-cooker. I will be spending the foreseeable future in my new apartment, eating beans and rice to recoup expenses on that one, but it was definitely worth it. The only things I need to buy now are bowls and plates (and probably some more silverware and some wooden cooking utensils) but luckily our Feria is right around the corner and will bring with it TONS of plates and bowls and hammocks…etc. that I will definitely take advantage of.

my sweet ass kitchen, also note the ducks poster on the wall on the left...

In my spare time I have been revving up my décor, I’ve always loved that part of moving. I have the old Oregon calendar from 2010 that I have turned into an art piece to remind me of all of Oregon’s natural beauty, from the Oregonian that Kathleen brought me, I have acquired a poster of LaMichael James doing WORK on the Oregon Football Field, and just around the corner from the map of the US, I have strung up some thread on the wall to hang all the cards that my wonderful friends have sent me since I’ve been down here J .

where all the magic happens...clearly.

my rad oregon tribute and cards from friends

another angle on the room...totally not the Harry Potter credits running...

And, in an effort to Feng-Shui my apartment (which gets more and more difficult the less space and more crap you have), I repainted my dresser in a calming, pastel-yellow (changing it from black…a real chore actually as it took the better half of a week to dry).

my little shared courtyard, fully intend to grow some vegetables.

Oh, and, amidst all of my painting I learned something about paint-thinner and Styrofoam cups; maybe everyone already knows this and I am just late to the party, regardless, I‘m sharing: they do not mix well. 

I went to the hardware store (la Ferreteria, as they’re called here) covered in oil-based paint and asked them for what I thought was paint thinner (still not entirely sure what it is). Outside of the store I was asking guys what it was called so that I could ask the guy in the hardware store for something specific and they cautioned me against getting it on my hands; citing that it would burn me if I did. Well, I figured; come on, I’ve put lighter fluid/paint thinner on my hands before to get paint off; maybe if I did it all the time it would hurt me but this is a one time thing. So I ignored their advice and bought some gasoline-scented mystery liquid, which they gave to me in an old plastic coke bottle. I got home and put some on my hands only to find that it did kind of burn and decided that I would go and buy some baby oil the next day to get the rest of it off (which I still have yet to do, priorities…). Then I decided to clean up the area where I painted the dresser and a few drops of paint went askew; so I grabbed a Styrofoam cup and poured the stuff in there only to watch the cup completely disintegrate within 3 seconds; I was shocked and impressed followed by extremely concerned about how long I had put it on my hands a few minutes earlier… that’s why we run these tests? Yikes!

So far none of my skin has melted off, for which I am thankful, and as of yesterday, all of my furniture was officially moved thanks to my friends being awesome. FINALLY feeling settled again and ready to resume working in the schools; whoop, whoop!

so there they are…pictures of my new place- I’m so pleased with it; try not to get too jealous.

In addition to my renewed enthusiasm for my life in my site I also feeling more and more confident about what I want to do when I am finished with my service. I was kind of waiting for something to convince me of what I really wanted to do with my life, something to more or less give me the go-ahead to spend the money to go back to school and pursue medicine and a few weeks ago, I had that moment.

I spent some of the week before school started getting to know a really friendly bunch of people who were down here from Ohio on a medical mission. I helped them out a little bit with translation of symptoms of people who came to see them while they were in my site (when I wasn’t visiting schools) and it really, really piqued my interest to pursue a career in medicine. It also helped me to see first-hand how the work that I am doing as a Healthy School’s Volunteer can help to reduce the cases of preventable illness through education. It was great motivation to get our schools on the right track with their health lessons and infrastructure needs.

So onward into the school year I trek.

Naturally, as soon as my vacations were over I started planning my next trip (to have something new to look forward to) and have gotten all of my ducks in a row to take a trip to Los Angeles for my 25^th birthday, so if you’re in the area…let me know.

ANYWAYS, enough of that; this blog entry has gotten a little bit out of control. if you have made it this far, give yourself a pat on the back haha.

One of my new years resolutions was to take more pictures….so hopefully this year will yield some more colorful/phototastic blog entries.

Miss & love all of my friends and family- thanks for reading! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and other holidays I can’t spell. Cheers to the NEW YEAR!

XOXO!