Mi Vida Chapina: Welcome party and other fun :)

The last two weeks have been pretty slow, so forgive me when I say the highlight of each were the PCV get-togethers :) Last weekend was our official welcome party for Quiché (and almost every other department in the Occidente) in Panajachel, Lake Atitlán, and words cannot describe what a gorgeous place it is! From our cabecera (department capitol), we took 3 buses, a pick-up truck, and a boat to arrive…normally it would only be the 3 buses (plus a 2-hour microbus from Cunen to Quiché), but an awful mudslide a few months ago wiped out the road that goes directly to Pana. Whatever, the boat ride across the lake was so vale la pena! It was really fun seeing a bunch of my friends from training and meeting some new people (there were almost 80 of us altogether), and of course dancing the night away! We absolutely fell in love with the place and the plan is to return there for New Years. We definitely need to go for more time, though, because that much traveling for only 1 night was insanely tiring. But I did at least get more peanut butter in Quiché on the way back :)

This past Friday was also awesome: a (belated) Hanukkah dinner with our “family” of northern Quiché volunteers, a really great group! We had a great time and the food was fantastic – I made potato pancakes, Stephen made the apple sauce, and Hillary and Mary made an “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” curry stir fry lol.

All this traveling since Thanksgiving has been extremely exhausting, however, and I definitely need to hang out in Cunen for a bit. Not all has been boring here…last Wednesday the town was in an uproar with the Christmas-season convite – they call it a social dance, but I’m not sure why because it’s a bunch of couples dressed up in really strange/inappropriate costumes dancing through town all day. I was in Uspantan working most of the day, but I got back in time to see the grand finale at the basketball court, where the couples danced a bit more and then de-masked. My favorite had been a pair of drag queens, but it turned out that actually a lot more men were in drag than I thought!

I’ve also made some more progress work-wise with my association in Trigales, who I’m kind of starting to feel connected to. Two Mondays ago I gave them a charla on the importance of having different commissions/committees within their larger group. I think the actual presentation went well enough, but they definitely understood and took away the message of the importance of being well-organized, and seemed to really appreciate my bringing it to their attention, which was definitely gratifying. I went around the village last Monday with my co-worker Moises to check on the mini bodegas (kind of like tool sheds) they're building with materials given to them by Save the Children and then I even went by myself that Friday. That was actually a really big step for me because I had no idea how to get to anyone’s house by myself, so I decided to go to the house of one woman who I know and she ended up taking me to everyone else’s, which was really cute :) It’s been kind of hard for me working with a community but not living in it, so little achievements like that always feel great. That being said, I went back this afternoon by myself only to find out there was no meeting…but at least I made appointments for later this week and next!

Anyway, as always here are some photos:

me, Noor, and gorgeous Lake Atitlán