Happy Eastover!

Semana Santa (Holy Week) has officially come and gone, and despite the major Jew that I am, I’m pretty upset about it.  I mean, what other holiday closes down your office for a week, forces you to eat insane amounts of sweet breads (MAJOR Jew that I am, during Passover…), stages a reenactment of Jesus’ last hours, and has the ingenious tradition of making colorful alfombras (carpets) out of sawdust?  Granted, transportation all but shut down by the end of the week, super hot days were punctuated by afternoon thunderstorms (oh hello, early rainy season!), and “Jews” with noise-makers were busily running around town searching for the hiding Jesus, but really, those are relatively normal occurrences in Guatemala!

To start the week off right was our unofficial welcome party in Nebaj for the 3 new volunteers in El Quiché; though 1 is not actually in our department and the other 2 are situated in Nebaj anyway, minor details… It was a great weekend and the highlight was discovering a pretty nice pool with a water slide!  Although I neglected to bring/wear a bathing suit, I somehow found myself in the pool, courtesy of Daniel :)  And the excitement continued on Sunday: not only did I finally buy some Acul “Swiss” cheese (who knew you didn’t have to hike 3 hours to find it?), but back in Cunen I potentially found a house to move in to!  Details to come.

The rest of the week probably confirmed my growing reputation as a paseadora.  Once I discovered my office was closed on Monday, Wilson, Melissa, and I spent the afternoon at Cunen’s famous grutas.  Supposedly they were much better before sustaining damage from the 30-year civil war and/or last year’s Hurricane Agatha, depending on who you talk to, but it’s still a nice river with some cool caves.  Tuesday I went to check out Noor’s new site (Chiché, Quiché…I’m a little jealous!) and to do some last-minute shopping for…Wednesday’s Passover party!  While I made 12 friends from across El Quiché come and celebrate one of my favorite holidays, I did them wrong: neither matzo nor matzo meal could be found anywhere in Guatemala, so we used saltine crackers as a substitute.  However, I did feed them choroset, veggie kugel, and saltine/matzo ball soup, plus supplied Maneshewitz wine to offset the non-kosher stuff, so the idea was there :)

Holy Thursday was fun with lunch with my extended host family and then the beginning of the tragedia, the reenactment of Jesus’ last hours.  Let’s just say I can take The Passion of Christ off my Netflix queue ;)  Anyway, they beat the poor Guatemalan Jesus up pretty badly (not all of it was play) and disappeared to “tie him up” for the night.  It was pretty funny because I was with Wilson and when I asked him if they were coming back, he called his friend that was participating to find out…but as his part was over, he’d gone to the cantina for the rest of the night!

Last but not least came Good Friday, which is the biggest deal here.  We woke up pretty early to help Jenny’s family make their traditional alfombra before the procession started.  While the actual decorating and having my hands dyed red-purple were a lot of fun, even better was Jenny’s cousin Ulmari hitting on Kate’s friend Tom, who’s here visiting for a month!  (Side note: in order to avoid more than the normal amount of gossip, Tom is being introduced at Kate’s cousin.  This has provoked some extraordinarily entertaining responses, as Kate is a small white girl and Tom is a big black guy.)  After the procession hit Jenny’s house and walked over our carpet, we followed it around for the rest of the morning until it made its way to Cunen’s calvario and Jesus (the statue, not the actor) was put back to rest (and then later paraded back to the Catholic church in the afternoon).  We had a very nice lunch with Jenny’s family afterwards, with more of Tom being hilariously uncomfortable and me having to explain that Jews don’t just run around in the streets with noise-makers looking for Jesus lol.

Finally, Guatemalans barely acknowledge Easter, but we had a really nice dinner in Uspantan.  With BAKED chicken!  OMG I was drooling; we only ever eat boiled chicken here!  And then we had to hitch a ride back to Cunen in the back of a pick-up truck, potentially the cause of my current bout of gripe.

Now I actually have a fairly busy half-week of work until vacation with Kevin starting Thursday!  Oh, and I learned today that there has been a fish swimming in my family’s pila for the past few days.  I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned this, but every family has a pila and it’s kind of like a gigantic sink where you store the water to wash clothes, dishes, teeth, sometimes small children, etc.  And now mine has a fish excreting in it and they think it’s totally normal.


Okay, this life update has gone on way too long, so here are some related photos as always:


Jenny, Melissa, Tom, Wilson, and I with our finished alfombra

a bloody Jesus getting led to his cross by Romans and “Jews”

the procession walking over a much nicer carpet than ours

my family’s pila (sin pescadito)

Did March happen?

I realize it’s been quite a while since I’ve written a life update, and actually quite a lot has happened since then…more of which was out of site lol.  I’m looking forward to being in Cunen for most of April, though I realized that with Semana Santa (Holy Week) coming up, this will be yet another short work-month!  (At the end of which, Kevin will be here!  Happy for your shout-out?)

Of course the most exciting event was my parents’ visit during the first week of March!  It was a lot of running around, but such a great time.  They got to see my favorite playing-grounds of Antigua and Panajachel, shop and fill up an empty suitcase of crafts from Chichicastenango, and conocer lovely Cunen :)  Actually, even though we were only in Cunen for a few hours, I think they really loved meeting and lunching with my host family, touring my house and office, meeting my sitemates, and overall seeing with their own eyes that I am happy here!  But I was completely spoiled by all the amazing food and fancy hotels – I always forget that Guatemala is super cheap on an American budget and places I think are expensive are not for normal people with real paychecks!  I was sad to see my parents leave at the end of the week, but it was nothing like when they dropped my off at the airport in New York in August and all 3 of us were bawling – a very rare event if you know any of us ;)  The hardest part, however, was checking out of the most fantastic hotel in Antigua and then taking a chicken bus back to site.  And then hand-washing my clothes the next day lol.

That was followed by a marginally productive week and a half at site, and then I found myself back in Antigua for a variety of Peace Corps events: 50th-anniversary celebration, Nicole learns K’iche, and the ag Project Design Management (PDM) workshop

The PC anniversary celebration was very nice, though mildly boring.  I only say that because it was very heavily concentrated on swearing in the new group of PCVs (we got 2 newbies in Nebaj!) and recognizing the COS-ing (Close of Service, aka leaving after your 2 years are up) PCVs.  So while I found that aspect very interesting, there was no real reason for me to be there.  And they ran out of food!  I did get to see my host family from training, though – thank god I’d called them recently!  So I went to visit them on Sunday…a very weird experience.  Not with them – we had a nice lunch and caught up – but just being back in the town I lived in for 3 months but hadn’t been back to for 5…I seriously didn’t recognize some of it!  And back to Antigua afterwards was a serious pain as all the streets were blocked up for one of its MANY Lent processions (Antigua supposedly has the biggest Semana Santa/Lent celebrations in the world).

Then came 2 days of 1-on-1 K’iche classes, which was very helpful as a base from which I can now find a teacher at site that I can improve with.  Look what I can say:

Nub’i’: Nicole.  In voluntaria rech Cuerpo de Paz.  In aj Estados Unidos.  Kinel Cunen.  Kinchukun kuk’ le winaq ple tinimit.

Translation: My name is Nicole.  I am a Peace Corps volunteer.  I am from the United States.  I live in Cunen.  I work with the people of my town.

Obviously I need more work…!

Last but not least was PDM, a very interesting but extremely tiring workshop.  We each brought a Guatemalan guest – my official counterpart Juan went with Stephen and I brought Don Alejandro from the association I work with in the community of Trigales – and worked in groups to identify a community need and then take every step to turn that into a viable and successful project.  While it was a little awkward having Alejandro around because I don’t know him very well, I think he really enjoyed the experience and took a lot away from it.  And at least he is fluent in Spanish, unlike some of the other guests…good luck on your future project plans, Whitney! ;)

And now March is over and I am back at site for more normal times.  I should also mention that I’ve started cooking more – my host mom brought it up to me that I should cook more for myself, so now I only eat lunch with them, which is the biggest meal of the day here…one more step towards independence; now I just need to find my own place!

Here are some photos from March:

my parents and I on Volcan Pacaya (not shown is the horse that took mumsy to the top!)

Brynna, Emily, Carmen, and I super excited about PC’s 50th

La Merced church in Antigua following its Lent procession