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.
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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