The refrigerator-less life

So if you’ve seen photos of my house here, you may have noticed the lack of a fridge.  Nope, not even a mini-fridge.  In other words, my kitchen is less well-furnished than most college dorm rooms.  It also uses a lot less electricity…part of the reason why I haven’t invested in something I’d previous taken for granted is that I pay for electricity apart from my rent and I’m just cheap.  (In my defense, my Q800 monthly rent – a whopping $100 – is quite a drain on my meager paycheck!)  Fridges themselves are also kind of expensive.

But honestly, although my parents cannot comprehend why their spoiled child would choose to live without this marker of civilized life, I really just don't need it.  My host family had a refrigerator and I barely ever used it.  It would be really awesome to have a place to store cheese (I love the expensive “Swiss” cheese from Nebaj and maybe sometimes I find myself daydreaming about cream cheese…totally normal…), but that’s really the only thing I miss.  I drink powdered milk, cook small portions, go market shopping frequently enough and buy only what I need, and being 2 hours from the closest supermarket kind of limits bringing back perishable foods that might just perish on the journey home.  I’ve also learned quite a bit in my situation, such as:

Eggs do not need to be refrigerated.  I’m not sure how long they last, but all the stores have stacks of cartons of them, so I’m assuming a while.

Broccoli starts turning an…interesting…yellow after being left at room temperature for more than a couple of days.

Once opened, homemade jam will last 1-2 weeks outside of a fridge before the inevitable mold starts to grow.

Unrefrigerated left-overs must be re-cooked over high heat for 3-4 minutes.  If not, you run the risk of allowing the bacteria that naturally grows on cooked foods (but not on unnaturally chilled foods) to do some funky things to your stomach.  I didn’t know this at first and just thought my newfound addiction to lentils was taking its toll on my body; my health-worker sitemates soon clarified the issue lol.  Luckily I don’t cook meat, so I think I’m safe from food poisoning.  Even so, the re-heating thing is kind of a bitch because you unwillingly end up frying your left-overs.  That’s fine for say, tonight’s fried rice that could potentially benefit from some more frying to be eaten for lunch tomorrow.  Pasta, however, is a very different story!

Anyway, I’m not complaining; it’s just something I’ve been thinking about lately and I figured life without a refrigerator was probably a foreign concept (haha!) to most of you.  My sitemate Melissa lives 2 blocks away from me and I could always use her fridge.  And I’ve been told that placing a smaller clay pot within a larger one, filling the space between them with sand, and always keeping the sand wet serves the same role of keeping food chilled.  I still have to try that one out and then maybe I can start stocking up on cream cheese!

I clearly don’t have much going on right now if this is the most pressing topic for a life update lol.  (Then again, food has always been a central theme in my mind.)  Work’s been its usual off and on…I actually had a surprisingly good turnout at a meeting yesterday about how to do a market study, I planted an herb garden with a women’s group last week, and tomorrow I’ll be making cucumber salad with my school group.  I may soon have a new women’s group to do cooking classes/demonstrations with, and Stephen and I are starting to plan potential SPA (Small Project Assistance? USAID-funded) projects with our green-bean growing groups.  And really, the non-busy days are also pretty great for Foreign Service studying – I’m all registered to take the test in Guate on October 4th!  My social life has been far more fun: the weekend at the lake with my sitemates was such a fantastic time (plus I got to restock my coffers of American foodstuffs!) and the weekend after was equally great with a classy jazz benefit concert in Antigua with my friend Allie, where we were hanging out for a GAD meeting :)  Now I just need to get through the rest of the week and we’re off to Xela for the weekend, to celebrate Melissa’s birthday in style at the famed Xocomil waterpark! (probably in the rain, but we’ll already be wet, right?)

I’m going to forgo photos this time as all my new ones are on facebook, and instead leave you to ponder what your life would be like without a refrigerator.  Could you do it??  Haha please don’t think too hard about it; you’ll probably never be in my situation!

12 months down, 15 more to go!

Wow, tomorrow marks one entire year of being in Guatemala and today is the very first day here for the new batch of ag trainees.  (Just 10 food security newbies, no marketing or municipal development, as those programs were deemed unnecessary…just kidding…kind of lol.)  Looking back to when I was in their current position seems like both yesterday and a million years ago.  It makes me question how much I’ve accomplished in the last year (a fairly trivial amount) and how much I’ve learned (quite a bit).  I’m about to get all self-introspective, so you can stop reading here if you’d like!

First of all, I’d be lying if I say I haven’t changed at all.  I wouldn’t say it’s due to living in tough developing-country conditions, because honestly my greatest hardship is how freaking far I live from everything.  Which maybe is part of it; living in a somewhat isolated small town 2 hours away from the closest supermarket will get you used to a slower and simpler way of life.  But really, I think I’m now just a more mature person.  No worries, I’m still the same sarcastic, opinionated, attention-seeking girl who’ll laugh at the drop of a hat!  But I’m also more realistic and slightly less idealistic, more serious about life rather than treating it as a continuous joke, and most importantly, financially independent for the first time in my life.  Granted, it’s on less than $400 a month so I’m not exactly saving up for the future, but it’s a step towards adulthood…that dreaded word!  I also just have an incredible amount of time to sit around and ponder/over-analyze my life, which should be fairly obvious in the rest of this update lol.

Anyway, moving on: Guatemalans.  I don’t know if I’ll ever fully understand them, and part of that, maybe most of it, is the language barrier, be it my still limited Spanish or nonexistent K’iche.  I have some very good Guatemalan friends – in town, host family, co-workers – who I continue to learn so much from.  Even so, I remained surprised by how people I don’t know receive me, varying between acceptance and dismissal, delighted with me and judgmental of me (I probably deserve the latter!).  It’s always interesting to see which one I will get and from whom.  Men are so different from women, indigenous people from ladinos (non-indigenous), younger from older, rural-dwellers from urban-dwellers, villagers from people from the center of town.  Each exchange is instructive and meaningful, and I think that the more people who know me, the better.  I may never be fully integrated into the community (how could I be?  It’s a small town, but not that small), but I’m convinced that individual relationships are what count.  And so I rejoice with every conversation on the street, every lunch or party invitation, every gifted tayuyo (tortilla stuffed with refried beans, so good!), handful of peaches or apples, or popsicle that may or may not later give me intestinal problems!

Guatemalan politics are equally as confusing…the presidential elections are coming up on September 11th and I literally cannot wait.  There is a huge multitude of political parties and each one of them promotes themselves with so much propaganda it’s ridiculous.  I really should take photos of all the painted rocks on the sides of the highways and the posters in town, some of which are really entertaining!  My absolute LEAST favorite part are the political songs continuously blasted through town by megaphones propped up on pick-up trucks; I live close to the municipal headquarters of 2 of the major parties, so I luckily get the full blast of it.  I would really love to know if politicians in any other country also change the words to pop, reggaeton, and marimba songs, and what sounds like funeral dirges.  I’m also extremely curious about whether or not copyright laws were considered when using the songs; probably not, given the abundance of bootleg CDs and DVDs and the freely painted logos and Disney characters painted on walls everywhere!  Anyway, I’m super curious to see who becomes the next president – the top candidates are a former general responsible for much of the civil war violence, a former Protestant preacher, and until recently, the current president’s ex-wife…a president cannot run for re-election, but neither can a family member run in the following race.  To “solve” the problem, they got a divorce earlier this year.  However, it turns out that they would’ve had to be divorced for 4 years so not only is she barred from running, 4 years from now she won’t have to be divorced to run.  But by then she’ll probably have lost the steam from her controversial, but definitely vote-amounting, state social program Mi Familia Progresa (My Family Progresses).  Ohhh well, who knows what will happen?  I just hope no riots break out in town.

Hmmm what else?  I’ve discovered many foods here that I’d never even considered in the States – lentils, cauliflower, snow peas.  Local güicoyes are an excellent substitute for zucchini and eggplant, two of my favorite veggies and which are extremely hard to find here.  Certain fruits, like pineapple and pears, are just so much tastier here, right off the tree.  I doubt market Sundays will ever become an uneventful experience for me, but it is very easy to get used to how cheap fresh produce is here – Q1 for a pound of onions, Q3 for an expensive bag of tomatoes, Q2 for a head of broccoli, all this with an exchange rate of about $1=Q7.75!  And I have fallen in love with comida típica (typical foods) – rellenitos (fried plantains stuffed with refried beans and topped with sugar), chiles rellenos (as best as I can describe, these are a fried pancake of shredded chicken and veggies, with a hot pepper), papusas (really Salvadorian – tortillas stuffed with gooey cheese), chuchitos and tamalitos (tortilla dough stuffed with pork or beans)…yummm :)

And finally, work.  I don’t really know where I stand on that subject.  The Save the Children evaluations are coming up at the end of the month, so I guess we’ll see in which areas we’ll continue and in which we won’t.  Either way, I want to get so much more accomplished in the next 15 months here.  The question, of course, is how!  There’s talk of legalizing some of our groups, getting them various certifications that demand higher prices for products, finding buyers and fixed markets for those that still lack them.  I hope I can play a role in these.  And as exhausting as they can be, I do love working with the kids and their school garden :)  This morning the 4th-graders and I harvested their Swiss chard and cooked it up for a nutritious snack…even though I’d never even previously touched Swiss chard!  A good recipe and a smart and hard-working group of kids helped (we all know I have no idea how to build a fire to cook over!) and a good time was had by all!  Also work-wise-ish is my new additional position on the GAD (Gender and Development) committee as the Sustainable Ag Project Representative…it was kind of by default because my boss is convinced that only 1 person per project can be on the committee and therefore wouldn’t let anyone else run, but I’m still excited!

Okay, I think that’s definitely enough rambling and reflection for now!  To celebrate my 1-year anniversary in Guatemala, my sitemates and I are going to Lake Atitlán, my favorite place to let loose :)  It will also end my longest stretch of time spent continuously in Cunen…while I may have given off the impression in my last update that I was depressed, I’m really just kind of bored!  And it’s really not that bad – 2 weekends ago I attended a wedding lunch and a lunch and party (on the same day…) for my host brother’s 4th birthday, which was way fun and awesome how I was included as part of the family.  And this past weekend I finally constructed a mini garden and proper compost pile in my backyard, killing my body and somehow managing to split my sturdy hoe pole in two…clearly I was not made for swinging a hoe around.  I have nothing but major respect for my dad, who does that shit every summer and is always rewarded with a great harvest.  I’m just praying my eggplant, squash, and pepper seeds actually germinate and grow and that my sprouting herb garden matures into usable plants!

Progress, in installments

I’ve been reading about the terrible heat wave making its way across the States and all I can say is, I’m sorry!  When I got here last August at the tail-end of Guatemala’s winter/rainy season, I was miserable and cold.  However, whether due to the same climate change forces the US is currently experiencing, or because the supposed resurgence of summer during the month of July, the weather here has been pretty perfect :)  Hot days, cool nights, and no sudden rain storms plaguing my afternoon community visits.  The clouds forming outside as I type might bring some relief to the farmers, though!  I’m curious (read: apprehensive) to see how August progresses and if the roads become impassable or not.

But this post is about progress, and more specifically how it comes in spurts.  And how in between those spurts, it’s very easy to forget about any progress made.  For example, I was so bored on Thursday that I remained shut up in my house like a hermit for 48 hours, until Saturday evening.  During those mildly suicidal yet productive 2 days, I neither dwelled on the successes of the previous week or 2 nor could I revive myself enough to predict how fun the end of my self-imposed state of recluse would be.  As my mood swing back to joy principally involved the return of sitemates and other volunteers passing through, I am further convinced that I could not have done this experience alone.  Also that I am a great self-entertainer but ultimately a terrible hermit!

I’ve diverged again – as I mentioned, the last week or 2 have actually been fairly successful.  Work-wise, Save the Children hired a new marketing specialist, Enrique, to work with us.  I was extremely skeptical at first because Enrique became our new Supervisor while Allan, the previous unhelpful Supervisor and whose daily work is a complete mystery to me, was promoted to Coordinator.  I further could not comprehend why Save was hiring new people when it a) supposedly has no money and b) is looking to end all projects northern Quiché by next June (I’m here until October…).  I have to say, though, after one particularly productive brainstorming (lluvia de ideas!) meeting, I am impressed with Enrique and his leadership abilities.  While Allan (though a nice guy) never inspired anything in anyone, Enrique came up with a solid 6-month plan and was very open to altering and adding on to it, especially to more actively include Stephen and I.  With a sidestep back to pessimism, that was the first installment; follow-up on the plan has been lacking.  Returning to my natural optimism: I also had a bunch of successful capacitations, teaching about responsible micro-lending, nutrition, and a manure “tea” organic fertilizer :)

Progress with my new neighbors has come haltingly as well.  On the one hand, my direct neighbors across the street persist in their blank stares/dirty looks whenever I greet them.  I for the life of me cannot understand why, considering I am far less threatening than other people actually from town, but I guess being a gringa and renting a nice house causes jealousy/envy/resentment.  Oh well.  On the other hand, a woman a few houses down has taken a particular liking to me and brought me over a tamal yesterday evening :)  She was also overjoyed that it wasn’t one of us gringuitas (little white girls lol) that died in a recent car accident in town – the victim was a woman from out of town, who wore pants and had light hair – it was actually really sweet!  Oh and I also forgot to mention that I had my old host family over for lunch last weekend, which was really nice; I always liked the family a lot and I think it’s easier to appreciate them now that I’m not living under their somewhat crowded roof!

To end this installment (!), I do not have any new photos to post, but I do have some exciting news: my plane tickets are booked to go home from November 13th-26th!!!  It’s funny how I was originally never planning on returning to the States during my 2 years and now I CANNOT WAIT!  Thanksgiving, Lehigh/Laf, friends, family, food, stainless/hole-less/form-fitting clothes…mmmmm :)

PS – Felicidades to all gay couples now legally allowed to marry in New York!!!

Monthly update…

So as the title suggests, this may be turning into a monthly update instead of something more frequently.  But that’s ok, as my life isn’t all that interesting and I know you all can only take me once a month, right? ;)

I do have rather excellent news: I am all moved-in into my new house!!  Apparently my landlord and I had some miscommunication (welcome to my life…) and he built a whole fence, instead of part one that could be extended.  SO once that was finally finished, I snapped some photos, sent them to Peace Corps, and got the approval to move in!  The OK came fairly simultaneously with the rest of the furniture I’d ordered from a carpenter in Uspantan, about an hour away.  THAT was kind of a hassle; of course it was raining and since the banks were closed and the ATM was out of service, we convinced the poor uncomprehending guy to take American dollars at the current exchange rate.  We found out later that Guatemalans can only exchange US$ if they have an account at the bank, so luckily my friend Stephen who lives in Uspantan was able to help the guy out lol, since the rule doesn’t apply to Americans.  Anyway, the moral of the story is that I’m living in a wonderful (almost) fully furnished house!  I need some more chairs, and mirrors, and pans, and a table, and I’m sure other things, like gardening tools and curtains, but I’m set for now :)

my furnished kitchen:

my furnished bedroom:

my giant pila and part of the backyard:

Hmmm since I last wrote, I turned 23.  That was super fun celebrating in Panajachel and Antigua.  I was just in Antigua again last week for July 4th.  We had a pretty interesting all-volunteer conference last Friday on hot volunteer topics and then a hopping party the next day – the 2nd not the 4th, as a Saturday was unaccountably deemed more appropriate.  I mentioned last time that I’m now on the Gender and Development (GAD) committee and my main job is running the 4th of July raffle and selling merchandise during the conference and party…HUGE SUCCESS!  We ended up soliciting 96 prizes and raised over Q7,000 between ticket and merch sales, almost $1,000!  The only downside was a conflict between GAD and VAC (the Volunteer Advisory Committee, who runs weekend activities) during the raffle drawings, but hopefully there won’t be any lasting issues on that front.  And credit must be given to them for a fun party and a great after-dance-party :)  A few friends and I decided to stay in Antigua for a few more days, the highlight of which was a redneck party at Mono Loco, the American bar/restaurant in town, on the actual holiday :)  As usual, I spent far too much of my meager monthly allowance on excellent food and drink (and less excellent hostels), so I’m a little broke for the second month in a row…oh well, at least I’ve got everything I need!  Including internet and a working cell phone…it turns out that losing 2 cell phones in a 5-day period isn’t as hard as you’d imagine, who knew?

my sitemates and I at the party:

The Antigua trip was also inadvertently a despedida for 1, probably 2, friends who have decided to leave early.  Or “early terminate” in PC-speak; how awful is that?  Anyway, they’ve both been very unhappy with their work situations (aka no work) and are out in the lonely eastern part of the country, where there are very few volunteers.  They will both be greatly missed and I hope things work out better for them in the States.

Of course it’s extremely hard not to question my own situation here in light of their decision.  I mean, work is…work.  It’s not especially good, but I guess it’s not terrible either.  And I do have 2 amazing sitemates and a lot of solid relationships, both with Americans and Guatemalans.  I don’t plan on going home early, but it has made me think a lot about if I actually like it here or not.  On the whole, I do.  Life can just be super difficult…my friend Carolyn does a great job of expressing our collective frustrations here.  So while I do kind of look forward to the end of my service here, I still have quite a bit of time left that I want to make the best of.  Although who wouldn’t look forward to October 2012 plans of traveling through Latin America for a month or 2?  (Positions for travel buddies are still open!)  I’m also starting to plan for the future by studying for the Foreign Service Officer Test in October of this year!  So much for photojournalism ;)

Busier Life, New House, 23rd Year…what??

I might officially suck at writing a blog.  At least at updating it anyway.  The thing is, as unlikely as it might seem, not much excitement happens here!  I think I’m finally at the point where, although I continue to count monthly anniversaries of being here, I’m pretty settled and life here is normal.  Not New-York- or really America-at-large-normal, of course, but I’m no longer shocked by almost everything.

Except cows.  I will never get the image out of my mind of a cow drinking out of a pila…within Cunen’s “urban” limits!  I still can’t believe I didn’t have my camera for that.  Another time we saw a cow scratching its head with its hind leg, like a dog.  I didn’t even know cows had that much mobility!  Animals here in general fascinate me: pigs on leashes, bulls roaming down the town’s main street, turkeys and chickens running about, escaped dogs eating baby chicks, rooftop dogs…I’m always reminded of the oddity of such everyday sightings when people come to visit.  Melissa’s mom taking photos of everything kind of weird in Cunen yesterday brought this to mind!

But anyway, back to non-ramblings.  Life is finally getting busier and more productive!  I finally met the 3rd farmer’s group assigned to me, so capacity trainings with them will start shortly, and things with the other 2 groups have been moving along.  I think I convinced the Trigales group to completely reorganize because even though they’re a legal association, they do not act like one.  Namely, each member sells their crop individually to a coyote/intermediary, rather than combining their crops to take advantage of higher quantities and collective bargaining.  We’ll see what happens over the next year, I guess.  In that same community I’ve been working with 4^th-6^th graders – one hundred and freaking fifteen of them! – on a school garden project.  So far it’s been fun, exhausting, and productive :)  We cleaned and fixed up the land and planted, and the seeds (most of which I got for free from Semilla Nueva!) are starting to sprout.  The soil isn’t the greatest, but in 2 weeks we’re starting a compost bin, at least for next year.  And although I can’t stand the cold that it’s bringing, luckily the rainy season has more or less officially started (and the rain is still nice and light), so there’s no pressing need for irrigation :)

Another new development is that I’m now on the volunteers’ Gander and Development (GAD) committee, as the Communications and Accounts Manager…aka the fundraising and marketing person, but we’re not allowed to say marketing lol.  So my big objective for the next month is getting business to donate stuff for our raffle at the annual 4th of July party (celebrated on the 2nd…) and getting volunteers to buy tickets!  Being part of GAD also finally brought me to Xela (SHAY-la), Guatemala’s second-largest city, for the first time.  While I was lost almost the entire time I was there, it was a really fun weekend!  A productive GAD meeting, spending Q600 on (mostly) needed things at Hiper Pais/Wal-Mart (couscous! Nature Valley bars! pretzels! new undergarments!), getting the free seeds, and a crazy welcome party :)

My most exciting and also most frustrating news is my new house!  The Muni program’s APCD came to Cunen last Thursday and approved my adorable, fancy new space!!  It did come with a caveat, though: it has a street entrance that leads to my backyard that needs to be blocked off.  I finally met with my landlord last night and we decided that he would build a little fence on that side of the backyard, which will be extended poco a poco (little by little) in the future, when both of us have more money.  So, waiting for that and for the furniture I ordered last weekend that’s taking AGES to come, my move-in date has been pushed back until not this weekend but the next, when I get back from In-Service Training.  Which just happens to fall during my birthday, so I conveniently get to celebrate in Antigua!

the front of my new house

what will be my bedroom with its fancy tiles and chandelier!

While I hate being projected further into my 20’s, turning another year older will hopefully give me some more credibility (street cred? lol) in my work here.  It’s not uncommon for professionals to be pretty young, as being a teacher is very common and they only have to complete 1 year of study after high school for their degree, but I think a lot of people have trouble taking me seriously.  Oh well, time will tell.  In the meantime, in addition to celebrating on my actual birthday in Antigua, this weekend we’re off to Panajachel for another welcome party that’s doubling as a joint birthday party for Carolyn, Justin, and I…let the fun begin!

I want to go back on vacation!

Happy Guatemalan Mother’s Day!

I just got back from a week and a half vacation touring the Oriente (eastern part of the country) with Kevin, and returning to real life is not all it’s cracked up to be.  Nah, just kidding, it’s great to be back :)  AND I celebrated 6 months in site on the 30th! (while out of site…lol)  It’s so weird to think that I’m ¼ of the way done.

But back to vacation – Kevin’s flight was seriously delayed, so our trip was a little bit too, but we finally made it to the ruins at Tikal (the flight there was so strange…I’m so not used to modern technology lol) and they were AWESOME.  That might have been my favorite part of the trip, I think mostly because I didn’t have very many expectations for it.  But we also had a fantastic guide and I LOVED that you could walk all over the temples and pyramids – so much cooler than other ruins I’ve been to!  We stayed at the lovely Hotel Gringo Perdido (very true in this case!) in El Remate, Petén, a small town on a really nice lake outside of the Tikal park.  Then came a 3-hour bus trip to Rio Dulce, Izabal, where we spent a couple of days lounging on the water, kayaking to Guatemala’s only castle (the fail Castillo de San Felipe), and me getting serious amounts of painful water in my ears after jumping like 15 feet into the water!  Next was the boat ride to Livingston, land of the Garifunas, black Caribs.  While it was fun drinking coco locos (coconuts filled with rum yumm) and walking along the beach to the Seven Alters waterfalls and bar-hopping on the way back, that was probably our least favorite part of the trip.  It’s kind of a sketchy place and our hotel/hostel didn’t have hot water.

I should mention that it had been raining sporadically throughout the trip, but it worked out great by vivifying all the places we were going to see.  HOWEVER, we got seriously caught in the rain on our open boat leaving Livingston, going back to Rio Dulce.  After drying off a bit, I hiked back to our hotel there, where I’d left my brand new Nalgene bottle and all the staff thought I was crazy…oh well, that’s neither the first nor last time someone will think that!  I figured that would fully exhaust me for our 5-hour bus ride to Lanquin, Alta Verapaz, but somehow the bumps of the unpaved road kept me awake the whole time… Our grumpy spirits were slightly revived by lots of food and happy hour at the El Retiro bar.  The whole place reminded me a lot of camp, with bungalows spread out across the property and one collective bathroom…which I got to know VERY well over that night with a sudden bought of diarrhea lol.  I didn’t want to miss our tour of Semuc Champey the next day, so I took 3 immodium and Kevin’s antibiotics.  Well, the caves and waterfalls at Semuc Champey were incredibly worth it, but oh man was I backed up over the next 2 days!  My stomach was rumbling all 8 hours to Antigua the next day and although we had plans to go all out partying our last night, after a delicious dinner at Hector’s Place, one of my favorite Antigua restaurants, I was in so much pain that we had to go straight back to the hotel!

It was a sad goodbye when Kevin left on Saturday, but he made it safely back to the States and I made it back to Cunen in time to shower and head back out to Uspantan for their feria.  It was a fun night, but I totally think our feria was better, even though their town is bigger.  AND they did not have Los Conejos!

So now I’m back to real life and actually quite busy working this week.  Plus there have been some developments on securing my own place to move into, so I’m working on that too :)

Here are some photos from the trip (on my brand new camera since I somehow lost my old one): 

the Plaza Mayor in Tikal

Rio Dulce with the Castillo in the background

Kevin getting ready to jump off one of the Seven Alters

Kevin and I at Semuc Champey after an intense hike to the look-out point

Many more photos to come on facebook!

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)