poco a poco

Here’s a random list, a little picture perhaps of what I’ve been up to…
I’ve been:
-Listening to a lot of great Spanish music and dancing alone in my room..
-Eating a lot of hot-dog burgers (hotdogs sliced on a burger bun with onion, tomato and condiments, excellent as it turns out, give it a shot)
-Fielding a lot of questions from my roommate’s nephew about how many people sleep in my bed due to how many pillows I have (there are 3)
- Dar(ing) the Vuelta aka walking around my town chatting with people.
- Accepting plastic flowers from taxi drivers…
- losing my enthusiasm for doing my own laundry, my hands hurt and I am ruining my clothes. I may have to start outsourcing it.
- accidentally getting into Glee (thanks KC), consequently singing in my room a lot.
- Learning to play guitar! My fast-track guitar books arrived! Thanks Beasleys!
- Skyping with my friends and family a bit. Good times.
- Getting PUMPED up for the big 2-4.
- Feeding leftover meat to Rico to try and buy his love and loyalty (it worked with Loba…)
- Drinking a lot of tea, I may be a tea person now.
- Picking up crying children who’ve fallen in the street and putting them on the sidewalk to finish crying in a safer location (my guide book advised me against this; turns out Guatemalans are not keen on strange gringos picking up their children but I couldn’t just leave her with her skinned elbow to be hit by a car…didn’t seem right; hope this doesn’t come back to haunt me…yikes).
- looking for chocolate bananas like it’s my JOB. I don’t know when Jacaltenango decided that ChocoMangos were the new thing but, I don’t like it.
- Killing cockroaches and being eaten alive my mosquitoes. The new fragrance I’ve been sporting is, “OFF, deep woods” if you want to experience what it’d be like to be around me…just take a whiff of it; I would say it’s my most notable characteristic of late.
- Peeling…I got burnt out at the Pila doing my laundry because I’m dumb and thought it was early enough in the morning that I didn’t need to put on sunscreen. FALSE.
- Watching a lot of movies in Spanish…I don’t know if this is helping my Spanish or just confusing me. I figure it can’t hurt right?
- Thinking a lot about the future and what I want to do with my life. Jury’s still out.
- Missing my friends and family A LOT!
- Getting worse and worse at doing crossword puzzles. I hope it’s because I am thinking more in Spanish…yes. That’s what I’m going to attribute this loss to…
- Not eating whole bags of marshmallows. WINNING!
- wearing black velvet hair scrunchies. It’s pretty boss.
- being handy. I screened-in my windows with mosquitero (screen material) so now I can keep my window open without opening a mosquito juice bar in my room.
- doing lots of Kristin-y organizational things, spreadsheets, word-documents etc. to organize all of my healthy schools contact information and directions etc. good busy-work; I actually feel like I’m doing stuff… for like a second.
- Listening to a lot of Demetri Martin. He’s a funny dude.
- wearing SPF 60+ on a regular basis (you’d think after 23/24 years I’d be aware of my fragility in the sun…I’m learning.)
- Running out of my trial version of Microsoft Office, if anyone has a product key for Microsoft office or word or whatever…and still has some installations left on it for a PC with windows XP that you’d like to donate to me…that’d be really nice and I’d like it a lot. You could email it to me…for my birthday?
- breaking off the metal part of an extension cord in the power outlet in my room…I feel like this is dangerous but I don’t know what to do. I don’t have needle-nose pliers to try and get it out, nor do I know where the fuse box that controls the power in my room is…
-making my bed every day.
- Eating yogurt that’s 2 days past the due date…this is very unlike me under normal circumstances... Waste not.

Other stuff:
I have just returned from the Huehuetenango welcome party. We went to some pools this Saturday and then out dancing at a place called Escape….which was really fun. I am not much of a dancer but I’ve been practicing a lot in my room so I figured it was time to take these moves out in a public venue. Cut a rug.
I also designed a T-shirt for all the Huehue volunteers that I think is pretty rad…I’m not sure how well-received it was…I don’t think the volunteers who’ve been in-site for longer than I have liked it very much. They're were other shirt ideas too...the ones i remember said somethig about following sheep-poop and mountains looking like buttcheecks, and I heart Taco Mansion… which, while i do like taco mansion...I just dont think that i would...wear it...ever haha. My design was a V-neck that said Huehue (where we live) on the front with a little mountain logo and on the back it said, “it’s far out, man” with a hand doing a peace sign…because we’re really far away and also far out in the, “neat” sense...right? I think it’s the cat’s pajamas and I really want to make and then tie-dye them…so…there’s that.

Oh and if anyone could translate “cat’s pajamas” for me? I use it pretty sparingly but I have no idea what it’s really saying…I just assume it means “cool”…

Lauren surprised me in Huehue at the Welcome party! It was really sweet! I was completely surprised…may have got a little misty-eyed when she jumped out. It was necessary. And then when we started walking to the buses to catch one to the pools we ran into Claire! It was almost a San Luisito (training town) reunion; we were only missing Brent. I can’t wait till we are back in each other’s arms at reconnect in a couple months!

I am still reading the book, “why girls are weird” and I found that if I just imagine that Chelsea Handler (comedian) wrote whatever book I‘m reading, it’s like 20X funnier. So I’m going to start doing that. Laughing is my favorite. Harry Potter’s going to be a RIOT.

I saw a really creepy advertisement that told me that a toothbrush is full of bacteria after like 3 months of use…I’ve had mine for 4...and now I’m scared. Will be buying new toothbrush this next weekend…fear marketing is my enemy.
Speaking of which, does anyone remember that commercial that was on in the US for a while where this guy was like jumping into his bed and it stops him mid-air and says something to the effect of, “do you know how many germs you’re diving into if you haven’t washed your sheets with Clorox?” and then like, black-lighted the bed to show you a “dramatization” of millions of little microbial germs living in his bed? Because that commercial really freaked me out. And I don’t have any color-safe bleach or even know if when I wash my sheets by hand if it will kill all the germs! I’m freaking myself out now. I’m not even really a germ-a-phobe. I’m going to stop.

I just disinfected a whole bunch of lettuce and plan on making myself a delicious salad tonight…cross your fingers with me on this one…I’d really like to count this as a win and not something that translates into me being sick for an extended period of time. That would really suck.

Until next time, I have some shout-outs.
- Happy Anniversary Dad & Kathleen! (2 years!)
- Dave: I hope you had a great time at PROM!
- Beasleys: Thanks so much for the Guitar books!
- KC: congrats on your end of service! Jacal misses you!
- Robert: congrats on Chile!

Now I’m regretting starting the shout-outs because there are like a million people I’d like to acknowledge but I’m afraid to start in case I forget someone and feel like a butthead.

To all of you wall-posting, blog -commenting, phone/skype-calling, emailing, real-mailing people:
I miss you guys. I feel really lucky to have such wonderful people in my life.

getting into the swing of things...

The Future's so bright...

Well, April is almost over and May is on it‘s way. On the 5th I will have been living in Guatemala for 4 months and…it feels pretty good. Another notable benchmark in the wonderful month of may would be my 24^th birthday which (mark your calendars) will happen on May 22^nd.

…so if you’re feeling like doing something different from a facebook wall-post this year, you could send a card to:

Kristin Morton

Voluntaria/ Cuerpo de Paz

Oficina de Correos

Jacaltenango, Huehuetenango

Guatemala, Centro America

I’d adore it.That's a picture i took from my roof...random. but neat.

I am currently feeling the urge to start a diary in the spirit of Bridget Jones wherein I try and turn over a new start “on the eve of my 24^th year of being single…” Just to start documenting all of my adventuring and try and guilt myself out of my marshmallow eating (I just looked down and the bag was empty, I have no idea what happened…) I have this fantasy about becoming an awesome journal-keeper and someday looking back through it laughing at how silly and/or neat my observations were.

Step 1. Buy journal.

Step 2. Write in journal

Step 3. Take select info and update blog.

Step 4. Will stop eating whole bags of marshmallows.

Good Plan.

Cue music.

Here are some tidbits on what i've been up to...

I'm reading lots of books. I just inherited the 4th Harry Potter book IN SPANISH from my sitemate, Kristina so my life is pretty awesome.

I found a cockroach in my room, named him lenny and then killed him. feel a little sentimental about it after the fact...

I found out that in Guatemala the Disney Show, "Hannah Montana" is called "Fannah Montana" which i think was nice change...

I am possibly an awesome cook...i made a whole mediterranean meal from scratch right down to the pita bread, taziki, Hummus, Falafal and rice tabouleh. I can't spell any of these things but i did make them and they were TASTY. I also made an awesome vegiterian pizza from scratch that i must recreate as soon as possible...i ate the rest of it cold for breakfast this morning.

It has been really hot here, i took a picture of my clock to illustrate this insanity and color my blog a little... if you can read it...it definitely says that it's 90 degrees...in my room...at 5:26 in the evening... Those of you that know me well know how well i function in the heat... thumbs up moment haha.

This was a pretty big week for me in the world of work and play.

in the world of work:

My work-partner, Damian, and I finished visiting all of the schools and meeting all of the directors which was awesome. Then our counterpart had a meeting with all of the directors where we re-introduced ourselves and reiterated to them that we’re here to stay…well, for the next two years anyway. I really would have liked to have had more to present to them in the way of handouts and an introduction to a requirement for the program like Rincones de Salud (basically a corner in the class where the students can keep all of their toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, towel, etc.) but our counterpart didn’t tell us that she was having the meeting until the night before at 7pm…this was really unfortunate because it gave us no time to prepare copies of documents or print out pictures. Oh well, what can you do? I do think that it was helpful to see all of the directors again especially since our counterpart only accompanied us to 3 of the 24 schools. It was an excellent opportunity to be re-introduced by the CTA (the US equivalent =superintendent). I hope that being re-introduced by her will inspire some confidence and trust in us by the directors and foster cooperation with us in the implementation of the program.

We shall see.

This week my schedule is more relaxed as Damian and I are creating a schedule and gathering materials that we want to present in our second visit to the schools . In this visit we will perform a diagnostico (survey) to evaluate all of the schools on the same criteria to see what we’re really working with- e.g. where we are now and where we want to go with the schools in the program; goal-setting, etc.

In the world of play, My sitemate has just left us in Jacal to move back home after completing her service. I feel really lucky that we had her here for our first month in site. She introduced us to a lot of people in the community and was a great resource for where to find things, how to do things , how to say something in Spanish haha etc. etc. I miss you already Kristina! Thanks for all the furniture and Conejos y la amistad! (advice and friendship).

It was also my sitemate, Damian’s, birthday this week. He celebrated by going to Xela and meeting up with friends. I stayed behind on this trip and watched over his new puppy, Rico.

Puppies are a handful. I will say that after my first day with Rico I was re-thinking my ability to be a dog-owner even to the point of whether or not I am fit for parenting haha. I went and played with the dog outside in the yard for hours and then walked him back to my place where I had some laundry to do. I am standing outside at the pila (outdoor sink) washing my clothes and I look in though the open door just in time to watch the dog pee on the kitchen floor! I had to count to ten to react properly…I was ENRAGED, we JUST got back from a long walk…but that’s puppies for you. So after his rude behavior of peeing on my floor I decided that he was not a guest fit for my home. So I returned him to Damian’s house where he could pee all over the yard if he wanted. I left him there for a couple of hours while I finished my laundry and ran some errands and when I went back to check on him and give him his dinner I walked in on him with a RAT in his mouth!

I looked at him in horror and quickly ran over to try and get the rat out of his mouth (because god knows what diseases that thing is carrying) and as I have my hand around the dog’s neck to grab him I feel him swallow the thing, whole. SO GROSS. Then what does he do? He decides he loves me and wants to lick all over my legs and jump up on me and try and give me kisses. Well….I put food in his bowl, told him he was gross and went home to try and rid myself of the memories of the rat in his mouth and then the feeling of it going past my fingers when he swallowed it.

I still haven’t fully recovered. These were isolated incidents, yes, but combined with the whining and crying and yapping that puppies do when you’re trying to sleep, when you leave them alone in a room, when you tie them up outside etc etc. this dog-watching weekend convinced me that I don’t want a puppy. If I have a dog at any point in my life I think I’d just prefer for it to be a full-grown dog first…even better, a full-grown, well-trained dog. Yes.

Here’s a picture of the little scamp…

In other news…I have put my room together and I am finally feeling all nested and moved-in. I took some photos to show you all my new pad. It’s pretty choice and completely unlike any ideas I had about peace corps living. I am definitely in one of the more “posh” sites and I know I am extremely lucky. Of course every place is not without it’s quirks…The cockroaches and spiders really like what I’ve done with the place…

Here's my kitchen/living room/office/bedroom setup! I thin that my favorite thing in my room is the coffee table i made out of a cardboard box and my neat basket wall hanger that i made...I got a little OCD on making the baskets all equadistant apart so it took longer than it should have but it was great fun all the same...

Mi Sitio

First of all let me just say- i'm sorry...very SORRY that I haven't updated in quite some time... as a newbie blogger and sporadic journal-keeper I sometimes find it difficult to write about what i'm up to...especially when there's a lot going on; so here we go- headlong into my first two-weeks in my new home!

Semana Santa
My first week in-site was during the biggest celebration of the year- Semana Santa (Holy Week). it was a great time to be out and about in my community, get my face seen and meet some people. The main event for Semana Santa is the procession through the town. Basically there is a "parade route" of sorts mapped out through the town and it is sectioned off and then invaded by people in the community who make these elaborate drawings out of colored sandand flowers and beans that are then sort of cemented to the pavement by a process i am unfamiliar with... little kids with spray bottles mainly and are left in the street to be viewed. I walked around and took some pictures of these "alfombras" (rugs) and then went down to the church to watch the beginning of the procession which consisted of a large homecoming-type float with a religious scene on it being walked through the town by a group of men in robes along the alfombra; effectively destroying it...followed by a crew with brooms who then sweep up all of the sand, flowers and beans. It is kind of amazing to me that they spend all of this time on making these alfombras only to be walked over and ruined in an instant...of course it's no stranger than my obsession with those sand bottles that i had as a kid- you know the ones where you stack the different colors of sand in the bottles and make art with them...once the bottle's full the fun is over because you can never get the different colors of sand apart to try it again...don't act like you didnt have a sand art set haha. To each his own. I am living in a house with a teacher who works in one of the schools that i will be working with. It is really nice to have someone to practice my spanish with and even nicer to have access to a kitchen! I have been enjoying getting back into cooking and hopefully back into eating healthier now that i am not at the mercy of whatever's put in front of me. Turns out that cooking without a microwave is a real pain but i'm up to the challenge. I have access to all sorts of fresh vegetables and fruits which is really nice; the trick of course is going to be learning to disinfect and prepare them all in delicious ways...i'm optimistic.

I have outfitted my room so far with a bed and two chairs for reading and relaxing (but right now they're just acting as a place for me to stack my clothes and healthy schools materials because as of yet i have not gotten a dresser or any sort of table or shelves). I stopped by a carpenter today and ordered a desk to be made for me. It was really cool because i could ask him to make it however i wanted it; turns out, I wanted my desk to be taller than your average guatemalan desk and i wanted a bookshelf on one side, his response, "no problem, how big?" how rad is that? you just can't find that in the US...well... to be fair, i didnt really look, but you know what i mean. And the best part? it's going to be ready for my by Saturday! I am really looking forward to having a workspace if for nothing more than a place to stack all of my books and free up one of these chairs for sitting in again.

Turns out the money for buying stuff for your house doesnt go very far around here so i have yet to purchase anything else but over the next few months i intend to acquire a few more choice items, they may include:

- dresser

- table

-guitar

-sewing machine

- bicycle

- television

The dresser and table are the things I will definitely get and the other items are more...fun-oriented...obviously. I would really like to learn to play guitar and feel it is time to start. I have a lot of down time in the afternoons and I am feeling a lot of creative energy right now; better put it to good use. Maybe i'll write a song about washing hands... who knows.

Other than that i've just been reading a lot. Today i finished reading a pretty good book called, "backpack" its about this gal who goes backpacking through Asia; there's also some murder mystery in there...and well, i dont want to give it all away but turns out the murderer is someone close to the protagonist, shocking.

My next book of choice is entitled, "why girls are weird," I'll let you know what it says, i'm interested to know myself.

As for my work...
I had my first day of work today! My work-partner, Damian and I visited 3 of our 24 schools and did introductions. It was great to see the schools that we'll actually be working with and it also gave me a lot of ambitions for projects to work on with them... For example, one of the schools that i visited today had all of these computer moniters and hard-drives stacked up in classrooms, collecting dust. it would be SO great if we could get those up and working to start computer classes for the students and parents in the communities to build basic typing and software skills. Of course...this type of project would fall way behind the primary concerns of the schools- which in two of these three we visited today appears to be water- there is not sufficient water for the school during school hours; i'd really like to do a project to build rain-catchmans and depositos for these schools so that they can utilize all of the water from rainfall during the rainy season during the dry season, but this is not my job. Infrastructure projects are not what i'm here to do. it's really hard for me to stand on the sidelines when i want to do a project so badly but the reality is that i have too many schools and to try and take on projects like that would be spreading myself too thin...and it would be unfair to choose just one school to work with when so many would benefit from a project...can't pick favorites. annoying.

I am going to visit 4 more schools tomorrow and then 4 more each day until i've been to them all and then we're going to go back to them and complete surveys to figure out where we're at, to mark our starting position and begin to make change and chart progress...

when it comes down to it there really is so little time and so much to do.

as for building confianza (trust)...

I went on a camping trip with a group of teachers from one of the schools. They had planned the trip as a despedida (goodbye-party) for my sitemate, Kristina who's been working with their school for the past two years. We went to Laguna Brava which was absolutely stunning. it was about a 3 hour hike down into the lagoon and a 2 1/2 hour hike out (how we made it out faster than in is a mystery, i can only guess that we really hauled up the mountain, my thighs are killing me). The Lagoon was absolutely beautiful- it's the picture of what i thought of when i think "lagoon" it really reminded me of these stories my dad used to tell us about felix and the lagoon. Supposidly there are spider monkeys that live there but try as i might I did not see any. Regardless, it was a great chance to get to know some of the teachers and work on my spanish as well as just swim around in the lagoon, get some exercise, ride in the back of pickup trucks, and relax. A great time had by all.

here are some pics of the lagoon

Well, that's all i've got for you for now. I'm almost done downloading episodes of grey's anatomy from itunes and i feel like a snack.
more to come; i miss you all. write me letters if you've got some free time and extra money lying around for postage... my new address is :

Kristin Morton

Voluntaria/ Cuerpo De Paz

Jacaltenango, Huehuetenango

Guatemala, Centro America.


until next time! Peace & Love!

Peace Corps Guatemala...in Mexico?

As one of my fellow trainees said, “I’d like to know if I’m going to hell with the devil…”

THE NEWS YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR (ok, maybe not, but I have) WHO & WHERE! I am headed for a town a little south of the Mexican border called Jacaltenango, in Huehuetenango (Western Highlands) with my compañ ero, Damian. I heard through the grapevine that our site is the furthest one from Peace Corps headquarters (approx 8 hours by bus?) and I am stoked to call it home for the next two years!

The process of getting to this point was a little stressful. We were paired through a questionnaire-type of deal with questions about what time of day we do our best work, what we look for in a colleague, what kind of conflict resolution method we tend to gravitate towards (explosion), who we think we’d work well with etc. and we found out our partners on Tuesday. Kristin and Damian…FBFF (Future Best Friends Forever…I’m thinking about having jackets made…kidding, it’s way too hot in Huehue for that… haha)

As for our site assignment, the reveal was pretty fun- our technical trainer made a map on the ground with tape and with our eyes closed we were led to our relative locations on the map and then told to open our eyes all at once. I opened my eyes and was a little shocked that there was no one behind us- yikes! The more I find out about our new home the more excited I become.

The area is 100% indigenous and while most of them can communicate in Spanish, the Indigenous language is Popti (Damian has informed me that we will be learning to speak it, I am supportive of this goal.) I feel like once we get a handle on the language that we’ll fit in really well up there…except maybe for the fact that I’m a pale, redhead and Damian is a really tall, black dude. So…We may stand out a little haha.

Here's a really awkward photo of us that I stole from Grace....thanks.

Apparently standing any closer together would just be too much too soon haha

That’s all I can really say about our site for right now… We will be visiting Huehue next week and getting our living situations figured out; meeting counterparts; touring schools, and FREAKING OUT (!? Nahhhh….)

I promise to take lots of pictures of my new home…well I’m going to try REAL HARD.

I am lugging a bunch of my stuff up there with me on this trip and as I’ve been packing up my suitcases I can’t help but feel a little sad to leave my host community and my fellow trainees; we’ve had a great time together ; matching friendship bracelets and all (sniffle).

I also can’t fathom how I’ve accumulated so much crap in such a short period of time…a little embarrassing if I’m being entirely honest.

I will really miss my host family and my home here. It’s been so great every time I open my door to come home to big, pleading blue eyed, khaki-wearing, baby (the calendar at the head of my bed, which for reasons unknown has picture of a white baby above an advertisement for fried chicken… not sure what the two have to do with each other…) I’m even going to miss Loba (host-family dog); we became such amigas once she stopped trying to eat my face. Funny how that happens.

seriously...

As for what comes next I’ll be sure to let you know. It’s impossible to relay everything but I can say that I’m feeling really good about the picture coming into focus in front of me...

The ultimate test of my Spanish and Technical skills acquired during training is approaching. WISH ME LUCK!

PEACE & LOVE!