2 weeks in!

Today was officially my 2-week anniversary of being in site!  So much, yet so little has happened since then…I feel like that’s normal for Peace Corps life though :)

First off, after a very nice ceremony at the US Ambassador’s house in Guatemala City, 2 Fridays ago my 31 classmates and I became official Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs)!  The Ambassador himself was really affable to say the least, and as we were outside and it was chilly, he even brought out a huge armful of (largely unfashionable) jackets for all the bare-armed girls!  It was a weird feeling sitting there, finally having completed the training which had been my life for 11 weeks, but only just beginning what will be my life for 2 years… Nevertheless, it was incredibly exciting, the feeling of which lasted allll through the night in Antigua!  The festivities definitely reached Lehigh status, and the next morning was strikingly reminiscent of feeling like death on many other Saturday mornings (though without Blue Sky brunch to look forward to!).  I somehow survived traveling the 6ish hours to Cunén and relaxed/recuperated the rest of the weekend :)

That Monday, November 1st, was a day off from work for Todos Santos (All Saints’ Day).  With all the hype surrounding the day, I was a little disappointed that my family didn’t really celebrate it, not to mention I felt kind of awkward intruding on their observance of the holiday (surprise lol).  We live on the same street as the ceremony, though, so I got to go and see all the decorated graves during the day and at night, and we watched all the people going past our house and celebrating late into the night.  However, what I later realized is that the next day, Día de los Difundos/Muertos (Day of the Dead) is the real party.  I left my office for lunch and didn’t return because my host dad’s whole Mayan catholic family was over to celebrate!  I can’t even begin to describe the differences between them and my host mom’s ladino (non-Mayan) evangelical family…Manuel’s relatives are just very loud (in both Spanish and K’iche), very entertaining and interesting, and very welcoming.  The funniest part of the day may have been when I turned to one of the young girls—who was wearing a shirt that said, “It’s not easy being a bitch, but someone has to do it!”—and asked her if she knew what it meant.  Of course she didn’t, so I started translating and wasn’t sure about the word for “bitch,” so I was just like, “puta?”  And one of Manuel’s sisters was like, “you have to say it with strength, PUTA!”  Oh my god, I was dying!  I should also mention the traditional foods of the holiday: ponche is like a hot fruit punch and delicious; fiambre is literally a mix of lots of leftovers and interesting, if not that tasty; and ayote en dulce is a mixture of ayote (kind of like a squash), corn, and I think something else in honey and is absolutely disgusting…I ate it for like 3 days straight and was ecstatic when we ran out!

Life since then has been significantly less interesting haha.  My sitemates were gone for most of the 2 weeks, so I’ve just mainly been hanging out with my family and befriending the kids.  Actually I had a dance party with them the other day, which was more fun that I’d like to admit!  I also went hiking with my quasi-sitemate Jared from Cunén to La Hacienda (the village where he lives), a trip that would normally take 20 minutes by car or bus on the highway, but took us 2.5 hours through the mountains!  It was really great to get some exercise in such a fantastic setting; I am in love with these mountains, and actually want to hike some more!  I mean, there’s literally nothing else to do here, besides hitting up the Sarita for ice cream, of course :)  Oh and doing laundry, which I have done twice since being here and which I continue to find a challenge!

My work situation has so far been fairly nonexistent, or I guess I’m still getting used to it.  So far it’s just been a lot of meetings to kind of figure out what me and Stephen, my friend in Uspantán (45ish minutes away) also doing marketing with Save the Children, will actually be doing.  I will eventually be working with two communities nearby – one is an association of onion- and garlic-producers that also has a small micro-loan thing going, and the other is an association of potato-growers.  Our marketing team has fairly large expectations for us for this month and the next, so we’ll see how that takes off.  One thing I’m really happy about is that I really like most of the people I’ve met who work for Save.  I don’t think I’ll be working with my actual counterpart very much, but I spent quality time with his/my boss in the car last week and we’re totally bffers now lol.  But everyone’s super nice and very helpful and don’t really mind when I ask them to repeat their names several times!

Hasta más tarde,

Nicoleee