I hope everyone had a great Día de Acción de Gracias, I know I did! A bunch of my friends and I went to Nebaj (a cute town about an hour from Cunen) for Thursday through Saturday and it was awesome. We had a really nice Thanksgiving lunch/dinner with all the works at this restaurant owned by an American – squash soup, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potato pie :) We actually ate there a lot over the trip and I definitely over-indulged myself in American food. Another highlight was the 3-hour hike over a mountain to the town of Acul, infamous for a cheese farm there…which had no cheese to sell to us. Luckily the hike itself was gorgeous and well worth it! Overall, it was an incredibly fun and relaxing trip with a group of great people that I was sad to leave.
Last weekend was also super fun when my sitemates and I danced the night away on Saturday. That afternoon was the official opening of the new parque infantil (playground) in the center of town, followed by an epic Cunen vs. Uspantan basketball game (I’m pretty sure Cunen lost though), followed by an after-party with a live meringue/marimba band. The band had also been playing throughout the game, which is definitely something the NBA is missing! But anyway, Kate, Melissa, and I gathered the courage to dance with some of their co-workers from the health center in front of a very large portion of Cunen’s population. I didn’t get home til after midnight, which as lame as that might sound, is the latest I’ve stayed out in Guatemala other than in Antigua. So it was pretty exciting and maybe made up for the fact that I couldn’t be in Bethlehem for the Lehigh/Laf game – congrats Lehigh! I was eerily as sick that Saturday as I was last year for the game, though instead of the culprit being an excessive intake of alcohol, I think this year it was due to an ingestion of unpurified water.
On the “professional” side, work has been picking up lately, though not very consistently. I’ve attended more meetings of my association in Trigales (the onion and garlickers) and finally met the other one in Chiul (the potato-growers), where Spanish was barely spoken and may be my motivation to learn K’iche! The last meeting in Trigales was an interesting experience: I stayed up late the night before getting a charla (presentation) ready; pretty much ran to the community because I met up with an old man along the way who walked ridiculously fast for how uphill an unpaved the road is; found out I was an hour early to the meeting, so I just hung around in their meeting place; and was then told that due to a miscommunication, only the board of directors would be showing up and I should wait to give the charla. So I’m either giving it tomorrow morning or next Monday afternoon, I’m not sure which…lol.
Also kind of exciting were some media visits featuring Save the Children’s work here. Last week a group from ABC came to Chipaj (an aldea of Uspantan where Stephen works) as part of a program on the Millennium Development Goals, so we went to see the filming, which was actually less interesting (and the Americans less friendly) than expected. This past week was a fun health fair in Chutuj (an aldea of Cunen) which was covered by the Prensa Libre, one of the more respected national newspapers. I wasn’t really supposed to go to the feria because it wasn’t my area of work, but it was fun helping out my work friend that coordinated it, plus I got breakfast and lunch (there was NO food involved in the ABC visit)!
But Tuesday I’ll have officially been in site 1 month…so hard to believe! Maybe it’s time to finally discuss rent with my host family; sometimes how awkward I am is a total detriment lol.
Abrazos y besos,
<3 Nicole
PS - here are some photos from the last 2 weeks:
me, Kate, and Melissa (she’s so culturally integrated wearing a blanket out) after the dance party
the view of Acul
Hacienda San Antonio (the cheese farm)
my family’s puppies (there used to be 3, but they’ve already given 1 away)
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